


Alienation

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Aggravation [6]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: BDSM, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:21:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25513477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: Some missions are dangerous. Some are difficult.  This one should be neither.  It has the potential to involve some unpleasantness but when there's an innocent life at stake and a system full of allies to be won over Tarrant doesn't think that's important.  Avon thinks he's a fool, but then when doesn't he?
Relationships: Kerr Avon/Del Tarrant
Series: Aggravation [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/202757
Comments: 37
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Themes of rape/non con

Tarrant was beginning to wish that he'd brought something to read. 

They’d been sitting on the marble benches at the back of the audience hall for at least two hours, waiting for their turn to address the woman in green. For most of that time the golden throne had been empty but a short while ago a heavy-set man in even heavier robes had come out to occupy it. Trepp the Puissant, King of the Ortan and Fenri Systems.

Tarrant thought the throne looked as uncomfortable as the benches, but at least Trepp the Puissant had enough clothes on to stay warm in the chill air. The king, middle-aged, bearded and unsmiling, seemed to have little interest in most of the supplicants. Tarrant wasn't undiplomatic enough to stare at him, but he could tell from his brief glances that the man was paying rather more attention to him and Avon than to anyone else.

That was probably good. Probably. Unless they'd been recognised, of course. He ran his fingers around one of the teleport bracelets, gilded over with a thin layer of gold and platinum so that it would fit in with the rest of the jewellery. He missed the familiar warm weight of his own necklace acutely, but he hadn't been prepared to risk losing it for good. The silver torc around his neck felt cold and impersonal instead. 

Avon hadn't so much as glanced at him since they came off the ship. He knew why, of course, but it would have helped to have someone to chat to. He wasn't nervous, exactly, but he wished they could just get on with it. The wait was getting on his nerves.

Finally their turn came. Avon stepped forward and Tarrant stood at his shoulder, trying to look neither up to the dais nor down at his feet while Avon pulled out a tablet and showed the First Minister details of the computer components he'd brought to barter for the local biologicals, should he be granted a royal licence.

It all seemed to be going well enough. They'd done their research and the small ship was stocked with enough of the components to look convincing. Avon could keep the trader act up for several days if necessary. 

Eventually the minister looked at Tarrant. "And is this for trade too?"

"A gift." Avon said, without looking round. "A small token of goodwill, if his puissant Majesty should have any use for such a humble addition to his august household."

She glanced up at the throne for a second, and Tarrant saw the slight nod. His heart skipped a beat. He was in, then. He let a second woman take him by the hand like a child and lead him away. 

Best case scenario was that they'd take him straight to wherever the others were kept, he could find the kidnapped young man and they could teleport up to the distant Liberator, mission accomplished at the cost of one purloined ship and a few computer parts.

He'd had close on a full-scale row with Avon about the other possible scenarios. 

"I can do this," he'd insisted. "No-one's going to damage me. The whole point is that I'm valuable."

"The whole point is that you're just property." Avon had said coldly. "In there you won't have any choices about what happens to you. Nobody will care about your safe word."

"I have the bracelets," Tarrant said. "The comms will be open all the time. 'Teleport' is the safest of all words, as far as I'm concerned."

"And if they take them off you?"

"If the ship loses contact then by all means feel free to charge to my rescue. But this is our best chance at getting the boy. I can put up with a bit of unwanted sexual harassment for the mission. And at least no one's going to be shooting at me this time. Find a better way and I'll consider it."

By the day of the audience no one had come up with a better idea. They'd stolen a small freighter from a Fed world, and the trading samples from another. Tarrant was standing naked in his quarters, still trying to decide what to wear, when a familiar knock sounded. "Come in," he said without bothering to cover himself up.

"Here." Avon pushed an armful of dark leather and glinting metal at him and settled into his usual armchair. 

"You're going to stay and watch me dress?" Tarrant said, amused.

"You'll need some help with the buckles."

The armful turned out to be a very tight pair of indecently low cut trousers and some sort of waistcoat that was more absent than present, what was there being strategically placed. There were indeed buckles, none of which seemed designed to be fastened or unfastened by the wearer. 

Dressed, Tarrant considered himself in the mirror. Sleazy, undoubtedly sleazy, but at the same time not bad at all. 

"What do you think?" he asked Avon.

"We don't have time for what I think," Avon said flatly. "Or at least not for fixing the consequences. If you still insist on doing this, you'd better put on the trinkets and find a cloak to cover yourself up. I doubt if the others will want to see this much of you."

Tarrant had grinned. "Afterwards, then."

"Survive this first."

The leather and jewellery had all come off but the two young women attending to him had piled them neatly on the table a mere couple of feet away from the large tub. Tarrant was certain that the bracelets would still be picking up sound so he made the occasional casual comment on proceedings to keep Liberator informed. It would be a pity if they aborted the whole operation because they didn't realise that he was taking a bath.

It was pleasant enough to soak in the hot water, though he wasn't entirely used to being nude in the company of strangers. The women seemed far from bowled over by either his physique or his banter. He suspected they'd seen it all many times before.

Afterwards they'd dried him in thick towels, an experience sensual enough to give him the start of an erection which he did his best to ignore as much they did, and started to work.

Tarrant didn't mind having his toenails manicured. As the women worked their way upwards to fuss at several areas that he would have preferred left au naturelle, however, he started to get edgy. He'd been prepared to tolerate all the indignities that his imagination could suggest, but by the time the taller woman was standing behind his seat with the scissors, all he could think was that if she tried to cut his hair short there was going to be trouble.

Fortunately all she did was trim his curls even more precisely than he'd ever bothered to do, and spray then with a hint of gold that he rather liked. After that he was helped back into Avon's choice of clothes which were apparently considered suitable enough, and he was allowed to put the jewellery back on. As the teleport bracelets tightened over his wrists he felt a sense of relief. 

He was almost enjoying himself again, at least until a chance glance at the mirror after the final precise application of make-up got him thinking. He'd never thought of himself as pretty before. Good looking, yes. But they had made him into something for other people to look at. More than look. The sensation wasn't entirely unlike how he sometimes felt when Avon's eyes were on him but far less personal. He knew Avon well enough to know that the man didn't look at strangers that way, however attractive.

The First Minister looked him over without any obvious admiration.

"What training have you had?"

Tarrant assumed that she wouldn’t count the Academy.

"None," he said honestly. "But a lot of experience and considerable natural talent."

Her eyes bored into his face. "That accent says that you weren't raised to this. How did you get here?"

"Too much gambling and fighting," he said with a hint of sheepishness. 

"If I'd known that I wouldn't have taken you. You'll be far more trouble than you're worth."

"I won't be, I promise. I've got too many enemies out there, no credits and nowhere to run to. Becoming a King's favourite is by far my best option."

She snorted. "They tell me there's not a mark on you. I don't think you have any idea of what it takes to survive here. What's your pain threshold?"

He stifled a laugh at that, because for a moment she sounded like Avon. "Very high. And believe me it's been tested often enough. I can be exactly what he wants. And exactly what you want as well. I know the value of allies."

She shook her head slightly at that. "Well, you'll either amuse him or annoy him. Either way he'll get some entertainment out of you. You'll do well to remember that you didn't cost us anything, which means that you're entirely disposable."

"I'll be sure to remember. Should I talk to the others?" he suggested. "Find out more of what's expected?"

"That will have to wait. He wants you now."

Tarrant didn't so much as twitch. Avon would be back on Liberator by now, listening in, and the teleport bracelet was firmly back on his wrist. He really didn't have anything to worry about. "After you," he suggested politely.

The palace corridors that they walked through were quiet and Tarrant briefly wondered if he should take out the guard behind him and the woman in front and hunt for the missing man on his own. 

Before he could act on the thought they were round a corner and walking towards a door almost as gaudily adorned as Tarrant himself and with three armed guards outside.

"Prostrate yourself in the floor when you enter," the Minister told him. "Forehead on the carpet, and don't move an inch until you have permission to do so. After that do exactly what you're told and he might choose to keep you around for now."

Her smile was cold. "We have various outlets for disposing of pretty young men who don't happen to please the King. You really don't want any of them to be where you end up."

Tarrant had up to now being trying not to think too much about what it would be like to be in this position but without an instant teleport and a warship at his command. The boy they'd come for had been kidnapped several systems away and sold here, unarmed and helpless. Tarrant would be damned if Liberator was leaving without him, whatever he had to do to make that happen. 

He could hear a babble of male voices as the door was opened for him. The king wasn't alone then. Pity. Tarrant had been hoping to have the option of taking him hostage. He was tempted to glance around, see if there were few enough of them for him to take them on, but one thing at a time. He kept his eyes on the floor directly in front of Trepp's chair and concentrated on not tripping over the thick rugs in his beautifully manicured bare feet. 

Six feet away he dropped to one knee, and then the other, bending with what he hoped was at least a little grace to rest his forehead on the floor and trying not to think about the extent to which those ridiculous trousers must be exposing his arse. 

Silence, and then a laugh from the man in front of him, echoed by others on either side. There was the sweet scent of a drug of some sort, and he could smell alcohol as well.

He wasn't surprised at the slur in Trepp's voice.

"All the way from Centauri with that and you say you didn't fuck it? What are you, blind or impotent?"

"Neither, Sire," came a familiar drawl. "But a wise trader doesn't depreciate his stock."


	2. Chapter 2

Tarrant barely managed to keep his head down. What the hell was Avon doing here? He tried to calm his racing heart. It didn't necessarily mean that things had gone wrong. There would surely still be someone operating the teleport. And Avon didn't sound as if he were in trouble.

There was another voice now, a younger man, being graphic about what he would have done in the trader's place. Tarrant was barely listening. He wanted to know who else was in the room and whether Avon still had his concealed gun. The question of how his crewmate had ended up in the King's bedroom would wait. 

Conversation, if you could call it that, went over his head for a few minutes while he stayed as motionless as he could. He could hear a second younger man in the room, trying to impress Trepp with his pornographic imaginings. There was nervousness under his boasting. Maybe they were part of the harem. 

He tensed his wrists, his hands flat against the carpet. One push upwards and he could swing backwards up on his knees and be on his feet in a second. He had no weapons, though, and he needed to synchronise somehow with Avon. 

Alternatively, he could just go along with whatever was supposed to happen here and end up in the harem afterwards with the boy. That had after all been the original plan, and he'd been quite prepared to go through with it however much Avon had objected. He hadn't relished the prospect of sex with a minor dictator with a nasty reputation but there were plenty of people who let themselves fucked by unpleasant strangers every night for a living. He could endure it once to save a life.

Only now he didn't know whether Avon was here to stop him or to make sure he got through it safely or in pursuit of another unconnected plan. Or, it had just occurred to him, the man might not have intended to end up here at all but had been caught up in a Royal whim. How was Tarrant supposed to know? Two of them operating with no planning or communication - this was the sort of situation that got people killed.

That very real risk decided him. He couldn't predict what Avon would do so all that he could do to reduce the chance of lethal misunderstanding was to be as predictable as he could himself. That meant doing exactly what he'd said he would do, against Avon's earlier protests. 

"I still don't see why you didn't," the king said, rather petulantly. "It's what he's for, after all."

"Ah," Avon said. "I must admit, your Majesty, that I like to use restraints, and even the most compliant ones do tend to damage themselves struggling. He's far too pretty to gift in anything but a perfect state."

Well, that could almost have been honest, Tarrant thought wryly. If it hadn't been for the med unit his relationship with Avon might had turned out quite differently.

"A fellow enthusiast!" the king said. "Let me show you my collection."

There was some shifting around and the noise of hinges opening. A chance while they were distracted, Tarrant thought, but he couldn't take it. For all he knew there was a guard standing behind him with a weapon. It was so infuriating not to be able to lift his head and look around. 

"Now that is remarkable," Avon said. "I haven't seen a set of these for many years."

"You know how they are supposed to work? I've never figured them out properly. I gave up trying after rather too many mishaps." 

"They are very similar to the ones I used. I would imagine that I could get them working as intended without much risk."

"Then you can demonstrate," Trepp said cheerfully. 

"Are you sure, Sire? Even used correctly there may well be some damage."

"I have plenty of others, and very competent medical staff. I want to see how they work."

"Of course." 

Now Tarrant was really confused. Had this been Avon's plan all along? Was he winging it? Or had Avon been backed into a position he hadn't anticipated?

It didn't matter right now, he supposed. His own role was clear enough - to go along with this unless Avon cued him otherwise. 

"Get up on your knees," Avon told him. Tarrant obeyed, taking the opportunity of appearing a little off balance to glance round the room. Just the four of them, though he still couldn't see whether there was a guard at the door behind him. There was the half circle of chairs around him and a large circular bed beyond. 

Avon was in front of him, looking down. There was nothing but cold calculation in his eyes. He was jangling a set of thick bangles. "Clothes off."

One of the younger men helped Tarrant out of the jacket and he stood up to remove the trousers, twisting as he did so. Yes, there was the guard by the closed door that his instincts had been warning of, her hand on her holstered gun. The room had become unsettlingly quiet apart from the faint clash of metal as the bracelets shifted in Avon's hand. 

"Sit down and put these on your ankles." 

Tarrant ran one of the rings he’d been given through his fingers. Not solid metal but some sort of silver-plated wiring. They would do something, obviously, but he couldn't guess what. 

Restraints. Something potentially damaging. Following further commands he added more ringlets to his thighs, upper arms and wrists. If they'd been at home he'd already be thinking about the sex that would follow the rough stuff. Here all he was concerned about was how they were both going to get through this safely and find the boy. He hoped that Avon could perform when necessary under these conditions. They might be in trouble otherwise. 

Avon twisted a control unit in his hands and Tarrant gasped as the bands tightened, digging uncomfortably into his flesh. Avon was walking away, towards the many-postered bed. He clipped more circles around the posts and turned back.

"Lie down here."

Tarrant walked to join him. "Face up or down?" It was the first thing he'd said since he entered the room. The others had all turned their chairs to watch.

Avon frowned at him as if he'd interrupted his train of thought. "It doesn't matter."

He chose face down. The bands pressing into his skin weren't enough to count as damage so there must be more to come. He had seen the teleport bracelet still on Avon's wrist, disguised rather differently from his own. One word and they were out of here, but there was no need for that yet. He hoped whoever was operating the comms knew not to overreact to a bit of noise. The instructions before they'd come down here had been clear.

"Now" Avon said, apparently to the room in general. The bands on Tarrant's right side tugged his arm straight upwards. He tried to grab it with this other arm but that was suddenly weighed down to the mattress. 

The pull got harder, as if there were invisible rope dragging him upwards. His shoulder twisted and he yelped in pain as his body rolled over and was dragged upwards, the pain sharp at hip and shoulder. The pull continued until his entire weight was suspended off the bed. 

There was an equivalent drag downwards on arm and leg from the left hand bangles. It felt as if he were being torn apart. If his joints weren't already dislocated they would be soon. He was struggling not to scream in pain as he hung sideways in the air from wrist and ankle.

Something eased off - the pull downwards had gone. No more than his own weight was now dragging at his hip and shoulder. 

Over the lessened agony he could now hear Avon talking. "As you have found out, Sire, you can tear a man's limbs off with these, but it makes a great deal of mess and I wouldn't want to do any permanent damage to your property."

Avon stepped forward to run a hand over his twisted shoulder. "At least this one has decent musculature. He should stay conscious for a while." 

A while? Teleport, Tarrant thought, but he didn't say it aloud, stubborn bastard that he was. He was unused to being so comprehensively restrained; he could do nothing but turn his head and, he supposed, speak, scream, beg or swear. For now he chose not to. 

"May I?" Avon asked. Not to him, of course. Avon held out a hand and the king passed over a short knife from his belt. Oh, do fuck off, Tarrant thought but he still said nothing. 

Avon was always careful with a blade in his hand. Tarrant had to give the man that. There was more theatrical flourish than there was actual cutting, far more superficial blood than actual pain and the knife didn't go anywhere near any part of him that might be easily damaged. Still, he hated knives, hated how vulnerable Avon had made him in front of strangers. If he'd given the man his safe word he'd have used it without hesitation. But this was a mission and there was the boy, somewhere.

It occurred to him, rather later than it should have, that passing out might be what would bring an end to the demonstration. He faked it, as well as he could. There was a pause when nothing happened and then he was falling, still spread eagled, to land face down on the bed. 

He was far more interested in the fact that most of the pressure on his joints had gone than on the discovery that Avon could indeed perform in public. It wasn't anything like real sex, obviously- Avon was being deliberately noisy about his performance, for a start - but it was Avon and not a stranger, and he didn't care nearly as much about it as he had about the knife. He focussed on faking unconsciousness until it was done. 

Another voice than he didn't catch.

"Sorry," Avon said blandly. "He's completely out. I'm sure he'll recover enough in a day or so to be all the entertainment you desire."

Tarrant held himself as limp as possible, not difficult given how bruised he felt. The conversation moved away from him and the bands loosed just a little. He heard Avon laughing, nothing like the man's genuine laugh but the others wouldn't know the difference. After a while some people rolled him onto a stretcher and took him away.

Left alone in a small med room, Tarrant decided it was time for a miraculous recovery. He didn't want either of them to have to spend any more time in the palace than they had to. By the time the doctor came in he was sitting up and doing his best to hide the pain he was in.

He mostly succeeded, being dismissed with nothing but some rather welcome anaesthetic spray for his cuts and a dressing gown. Another guard led him, slowly and stumbling somewhat, down some more corridors to a locked and guarded door. He staggered inside, stopped at the first seating he could find and collapsed into it. Only then did he look around. 

This had to be the place. There were vid screens and gaming tables and a dozen or so youngish men all watching him. Tarrant thought briefly about formulating a proper plan then decided that he'd had enough of play-acting and even more of this bloody planet. He looked around the room until he saw the face he was looking for, struggled back to his feet, limped over to the young man, grabbed his wrist and said loudly, "Teleport now."

"How do they work?"

Tarrant dropped the bracelets on Avon's bed. The man looked round from the desk.

"The base units create an electric field. The bands are electromagnets. The control unit can vary both to achieve the desired effect. Difficult to make and even more to control."

"So can he replace the bracelets?"

"They would be no good to him if he could. I brought the control units back with me."

"You fancied a new toy?"

Avon frowned at him. "It's far too dangerous to play with. There are no failsafes built in."

"But you've played with it before."

"No." Avon turned his chair to face where Tarrant had sat on the bed. "I'd seen a description of them once, that's all. They aren't at all suitable for consensual entertainment."

"Ah." Tarrant said. "So you didn't know what you were doing and you could have ripped my limbs off, then. What on earth made you claim a proficiency you didn't have?"

"I had been observing his puissant Majesty for some time by then," Avon said. "You were a great deal safer with doubtful tech in my hands than with run-of-the-mill instruments of torture in his. To me you're a skilled and difficult to replace pilot. To him you were just one more piece of flesh."

Tarrant contemplated that for a moment. "You could just have aborted the whole thing, if you thought I was in that much danger."

"You'd gone to a great deal of trouble to get there. I thought I'd leave that as your decision."

"You're an arrogant bastard," Tarrant said with some anger. "As long as you're in control anything goes."

"I'm arrogant? You're the one who put yourself in that position. How long do you think you'd have lasted if I wasn't there?"

"I had a teleport!" Tarrant snapped back. "Which, it turns out, would have been a great deal safer than letting you take over. That thing fucking hurt and now you blithely tell me that you could have killed me, just because you wanted to be in on the action. My original plan might not have been perfect but it didn't involve dying."

"You might not have had a choice about that," Avon said coldly.

"Well no, it turns out I didn't have a choice about it. The only choice I was given was whether to trust you or not and I clearly jumped the wrong way on that one."

Avon sighed. "I was extremely cautious. It would have been far more dangerous if he'd decided to try it."

"If he'd tried to put devices of unknown origin and power on me I'd have been straight out of there," Tarrant snarled. "The only reason I let it happen was that it was you doing it." 

He reached around the back of his neck to unclasp his necklace. "You'd better have this back, I think. Whatever you think it represents, it doesn't seem to be appropriate any more."

He dropped it on top of the bangles and walked out.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't the first time they'd fallen out, of course. It wasn't even the first time they'd fallen out over Avon's domineering and cavalier disregard for his wellbeing. And Tarrant had been in a couple of real crash-and-burn relationships in the past but never one he had to say that about, not till now.

He felt not just angry but stupid. He couldn't claim that he hadn't known, after all. He'd pretended to himself that the control freakery was all just part of the sadomasochism when he'd known all along that the problem was Avon's personality, not his kinks. 

The knock on his door was too tentative to be Avon so he opened it. It was Nerus, their recovered stray. Tarrant hadn't spoken to him much; the pilot had been straight off to the med unit on reaching Liberator and Nerus had been settled in his quarters by the time he emerged. He gestured for the young man to come in. "Everything all right?"

Nerus stood in the middle of the floor, feet apart, doing his best to look determined. He was skinny and several inches shorter than Cally, with large blue eyes and a rather lost expression; he looked much younger than the nineteen Earth years that they’d been told. "I think I need to go back," he said. 

"To Ortan? Why on Earth?"

"There's the others. I should try to get them out too."

Tarrant grimaced. "Ah. I'm afraid it's not that easy. There are too few of us to take on the palace guard and we can't teleport people up fast enough before the shooting will start. Liberator's great at blowing things up from orbit, but mass hand-to-hand fighting isn't our speciality.”

"I don't need you to rescue them," Nerus said. "I just need you to teleport me down there with enough weapons for everyone. We can fight our way to freedom ourselves, given the chance,"

Tarrant tried not to let his gut instinct scepticism show. If Nerus was prepared to try it, who was he to say no? There was no reason why the boy shouldn’t be braver than he looked and the other men down there undoubtedly deserved a chance. 

"Zen. Message to all the others. Can you be on the flight deck in ten minutes? There's something we need to discuss."

A response came almost immediately from Avon. "Has this anything to do with your recent tantrum?"

"No. Just be there, will you?"

Tarrant narrowed his eyes at the sketched map. "We should assume there will be extra guards after our recent hi jinks. Any idea where?"

"He doesn't like posting anyone inside our quarters," Nerus said. "So just outside I guess."

"Two doors," Dayna said. "We'll have to cover both while your people get awake and armed.”

“They'll be looking out for the Liberator too. We won't get as close as last time without being spotted.” Tarrant pointed out.

"Can they damage us?" Cally asked.

"Possibly. They've got warships; not that powerful but a clean shot would put a hole in us all the same. Sorry, Nerus. I'd like to come down with you but I'm going to have to stay with my ship this time."

"I'll go," Cally said.

"And me," Dayna added.

"Vila on the teleport?" Tarrant said. "I doubt that he'll object to that."

"Always glad to help," Vila said cheerfully.

"And Avon on shields and weapons, then." He glanced over to the silent man. "Any objections?"

“We had a deal with his people on Ricon 2 to get him home,” Avon said. “If he gets killed in this escapade, what have we gained for our trouble?"

"I'll leave a recording for my mother." Nerus said. "I'll tell her that you got me out and she should pay you whatever was agreed."

“We didn’t do it for money,” Cally said, slightly sharply. “It was a matter of proving our good faith for a potential alliance.” 

"And if all we can bring your mother is news of your heroic death then I would guess that alliance is dead in the water,” Avon said. 

"So what do you want to do?" Tarrant demanded of Avon.

"Take him home, agree the alliance, and leave him to launch whatever raids that he wants without us."

"Our teleport is their best chance of succeeding," Tarrant said. "I know that your idea of risk and mine don't coincide but delivering a few guns will be no great trouble for us. We've already become involved. We should finish the job."

Tarrant ended up putting the matter to a vote. He never liked doing that - consensus was much preferable and neither he nor Avon really put much stock in democracy when it came to decisions about Liberator. But on the occasions when he really couldn't reach any agreement with Avon there was nothing else to be done. 

Four to one they voted to head back to Ortan. Avon shrugged almost imperceptibly and said no more.

Nerus asked if he could send a message to his family on Ricon 2. Tarrant showed him how the comms worked and left him to it. The guy had lived without any privacy for weeks; they weren’t going to insist on checking his mail. 

Dayna was assembling a dozen low powered and easy to use guns, each with an inhibitor chip to stop it firing at anyone wearing a teleport bracelet. Just in case, she said. Firefights could confuse those unused to them. Tarrant, who was not a fan of rank amateurs with guns, wholeheartedly approved. Nerus seemed to be certain that the others would be as keen as he was on fighting for their freedom, but there was always a chance that someone might decide that siding with the establishment was the wisest choice. 

Nerus himself was spending most of his time with Cally, practicing shooting and discussing strategies. Tarrant joined then for a white but he soon realised that the man was uncomfortable in his company. He could think of various awkward reasons why that might be the case so he kept away.

He'd had research of his own to do into the system’s defences but they weren’t particularly complicated. They had full specs for all four warships. Orac didn’t have the information needed to track their last known positions but the ship would pick them up on scan from an more than adequate distance. It wouldn’t be a problem.

Tarrant spent most of the three days flying back on the flight deck, chatting desultorily with whoever happened to be there. He took Avon's occasional appearance as the signal to eat, or sleep, or otherwise find somewhere else to be.

The first time he was actually stuck on the deck with the man was only a few minutes before their final approach. The others were all waiting at the teleport. He'd thought that Avon was leaving him to do all the work but the man sauntered in to take his place just before the fireworks might start.

"Our approach vector is on screen," Tarrant said. “The warships’ weaponry lists are on your console."

"Yes, I've seen them." Avon said. "The torpedoes are the only serious threat."

Tarrant was slightly miffed to have the wind taken out of his sails. "If you'd been here earlier we could have discussed it."

"We just did," Avon said. "Given that you haven't spoken to me once in two days I presumed that you'd want to keep the chatter to a minimum."

"Have I hurt your feelings?" With more than a touch of sarcasm.

"Ingratitude is one of your more unattractive tendencies. I've grown used to it." Avon said.

"Ingratitude?" A small cluster of blobs appeared on the screen. "Can you id those ships?"

"Three freighters and their armed escort. They don’t belong to this system and they'll probably stay out of trouble if we let them. Your clever scheme was lost the moment you were sent to the king. If I hadn't been there you'd have done nothing but take some damage and teleport out. You wouldn't have stayed in there long enough to get to the boy."

"Tarrant to teleport room. Twenty three seconds to teleport range. Tarrant out. You don't know what would have happened. You only know what did happen."

"What did happen was that the mission succeeded. Shields up. Warship B just appeared on screen."

Tarrant could see her now. "Keep monitoring for now." They weren't at war with these people. He'd rather not attack her. “I suppose that I thought you might care more for my safety than the mission," he said. "Within teleport range in five."

"Honestly? You're sulking because you insisted on putting your life in danger and I didn't whisk you off to safety?"

"Vila, put them down now."

There was silence for a beat of three. "Down and safe," Vila reported.

The warship, unsubtly named Deathdealer, was nowhere near heavily armed enough to damage them on her own. "Avon, tell her to surrender. No, on second thoughts just tell her to get out of here. We don't need them to capitulate."

He had no interest in interfering in Ortan's affairs more than necessary but he didn't want to get shot at while waiting for the others' return. "And get a torpedo ready, in case they don't listen."

The warship was still coming towards them. Avon's voice was quiet and intense on the comm. Tarrant brought Liberator round to a slightly better angle for firing and waited. 

"They want to know what we're doing here,” Avon said. "I've told them we're after the cargo on those freighters and they shouldn't interfere." 

Smart thinking on Avon's part. Normally he'd say so.

Deathdealer was curving now, accelerating towards the distant group of ships. "They say all ships in their system are under their protection, and warn us not to go any closer."

Tarrant had no intention of going closer. "Good. We’ll make it look like a stand-off. The women should be back any minute."

Liberator’s crew were only supposed to be there to hold the doors while the harem got themselves armed and organised. 

Avon turned so that he could raise an eyebrow. "Seriously? Have you ever tried to get Dayna away from a fight?"

“Vila?” Tarrant called over the com. “Latest report from the planet?”

“There hasn’t been one yet. Ten minute intervals they said and it’s only been six minutes so far.”

Tarrant barely resisted the urge to tell Vila to get them to report now anyway. It was never a good idea to change anything during an ongoing mission unless absolutely necessary. Avon had demonstrated that.

“Let me know as soon as they do report. Tarrant out.”

“You’re edgy,” Avon commented.

“Your fellow sadists down there aren’t particularly nice people. Something that didn’t much bother you, apparently.”

“Hold that thought, if you must,” Avon said. “I still have your orders to carry out.” He turned back to his com. There was nothing for Tarrant to do but wait, and he did hate waiting.

He watched Avon’s back as the man stood, shoulders slightly hunched over his console. He missed the weight of his necklace and bracelets. Why did Avon have to be such an arse? 

“They are giving us an hour to start moving out of the system,” Avon said without turning.

“An hour? That’s excessive. They must be waiting for reinforcements.”

“Obviously,” Avon said. 

Tarrant grimaced. One ship was no trouble. Three or four might put up a decent fight.

They could easily take the Deathdealer out now, and the freighters’ escort with her. But the ships were just defending their respective responsibilities as best they could. Even if Trepp was a kidnapper and rapist the Ortan system as a whole was unobjectionable enough. Like most of these smaller systems it was always at some risk from its more aggressive neighbours, the Federation among them, and certainly didn’t need Liberator taking out its entire defense fleet if it could be helped.

“Shout out as soon as we get any more company,” he told Avon. He thought about going back to the argument but they both needed to be paying attention. "Vila? Anything yet?”

“Not yet. They aren’t picking up my signal.”

They might just be in the middle of the expected fight. Tarrant opened his mouth and Avon spoke sharply.

“Ships in quadrant three. Warships C and D.”

“Damn. That was quick.” The new warships were still a good half hour away, out past the outermost edges of the system. He could just wait it out, but if at the end of thirty minutes the others were still on the planet and Liberator had three hostile ships to deal with he’d have screwed up. And he didn’t like waiting.

“Can we cripple the Deathdealer?”

“Not reliably from this distance, “Avon said. “We can go after her, but we’ll leave teleport range.”

He wasn’t going to strand anyone down on that planet, even for a few minutes. “Try your best to take out her engines from here. The alternative’s blowing her up deliberately so we haven’t got much to lose.”

“We haven’t got anything to lose,” Avon said. “They do.”

“Got a better idea?”

“I’ve no objection to yours. I was merely correcting your statement.” Avon said. “I’ll need a minute to recalibrate the torpedoes to hone in on the engine emissions.”

“No hurry,” Tarrant said. He wasn’t at all sure that the attack was necessary but his first responsibility was his ship and crewmates. He couldn’t afford too much compassion for strangers who intended to attack him, even if they had good reason for it.

Still nothing from Vila. He waited.

“Torpedo launched,” Avon said. 

So he wasn’t to get a chance to change his mind; that was probably for the best.

They watched over the next couple of minutes as the Deathdealer tried evasive manoeuvres without success until it blossomed red on the screen.

“Engines are out,” Avon said. “Too early to tell if life support survived.”

“If they need rescuing the freighters will have to do it, or their fellow warships,” Tarrant said. “We’re not going out of teleport range. Vila, any report?”

“No,” Vila said. “I do keep trying,”

“Carry on.” No need to distract Vila with the news that they had company, not yet. They could take on the remaining two ships without much risk.

Tarrant watched the small movements on the screen. The freighters were still running away, slowly. The two remaining warships veered slightly towards the Deathdealer. They were still going to be in range soon.

“If all four warships had been together and we weren’t able to move away from teleport range Liberator could have been in real trouble,” Avon’s voice broke the silence.

Tarrant frowned at him, rather bemused. “The risk of that was tiny.”

“That matters now, does it?”

“Of course it matters.” He met Avon’s stare. “Oh. No. It’s not the same at all.”

“A small risk to your life in the process of rescuing a stranger who owed us nothing? Exactly how was it different, Tarrant?”

“Because I didn’t choose to fly past warships for my own sexual gratification!” he snapped back.

Avon kept his gaze but said nothing.

The lengthening silence was ended by Zen’s voice. “One of the ships being tracked is no longer detectable.”


	4. Chapter 4

Tarrant swivelled back to the screen just in time to see the second blob vanish.

"What the hell? Zen, extend scan to very long range. Any trace at all of moving objects?”

The screen went dark. They were past Zen's normal range and only a few photons would be reaching then now. 

"There!" Avon said. Several tiny flickers. "That's what took them out. And I wouldn't count on them being allies of ours."

"Me neither." Tarrant had automatically started to compute an escape course. 

“Vila,” he called across the comm. “We’ve got company, probably Feds. Use the override to get the others back.

“Not a good idea," Avon spoke over him. “If that was a trap as well then anyone could be wearing those bracelets by now. Try to get in touch with them again.”

He was already halfway across the room towards the door, grabbing a gun as he passed the rack.

"What are you going to do?"

"Shoot anyone who appears without an invitation.”

“Hurry,” Tarrant told him. The very long distance scan was showing multiple flickers now, in several directions. “If those are pursuit ships we need to get the hell out of here.”

Alone, Tarrant took another look at the slowly strengthening signals. Liberator had scans nearly an order of magnitude better than anyone else's so the chances were good that they thought they'd wouldn't be spotted for several minutes yet. 

He couldn't think of what to do with this very slight advantage except get the hell out of there and he couldn't do that. The ship couldn't move more than a couple of hundred spatials further away from the planet without jeopardising teleport. 

"No response to communications." Avon's voice came over the comm. "I'm bringing them up now."

The silence stretched out. "Avon?"

"Nothing. The bracelets aren't operating."

Assuming they weren't blocked or malfunctioning, that meant they weren't being worn. Fuck. 

Choices. Go down after them, but that meant Avon and Vila, who was not all that useful in a fight and probably wouldn't agree to go anyway. So just Avon against the alerted palace guard and almost certainly Fed soldiers as well. That was hopeless even by Tarrant's standards.

"Don't go after them!" he said hastily.

“Too late,” Vila came back. “He’s gone.”

“Get him back!”

“Wait three minutes, he said, if we hadn’t heard from him.”

Tarrant wondered which of them Vila was more scared of. Not him, probably. And Avon down there could be the women’s only chance. “Let me know the second they’re back.”

It was a long wait, all 130 seconds of it, until Vila's voice came over the com. "Avon says go."

Tarrant put the ship into motion. The ships were clear now on scan, eight of them fanned around Liberator. This was going to be tight.

"Zen, go dark, long range scans on max, prioritise engine repairs,"

Was there anything else? The stimulant had worn off and Tarrant felt as if he wasn't thinking clearly any more.

"Get some sleep," Avon's voice came from behind him. “We can't do anything else until the ship's repaired and her pilot is functional again. We're as safe out here as anywhere. Go to bed."

Avon was right. He was exhausted. Liberator had taken damage to an engine from a random piece of rock getting hell for leather out of the Ortan system and her resultant limping speed meant that they couldn't get entirely clear of the pursuit ships. There had been five separate engagements (at least he thought he could remember five) as they ran, fought and ran again, just the three of them on the flight deck. Eventually he'd shaken the enemies off her battered tail and found a bit of dark and empty space to hide in. 

Dayna was slowly stabilising in the med unit; Nerus had stuck a knife in her back. Cally had been battered over the head by a gun that couldn't fire at her; her injuries weren't life threatening but they were still severe and she was under sedation until her turn to be treated. 

At some point Tarrant would have to think about what had happened back there and how much of it was his fault, but not now. He staggered back to his quarters, collapsed on the bed and slept. 

"Zen, report."

No new problems, at least. The repairs were underway and nothing had troubled the scans while he slept. Dayna was out of the med unit and asleep, as was Villa. Cally should also be fully healed shortly. Avon was in the galley.

There was no question now of avoiding Avon, Tarrant supposed. This was no time to hold a grudge. He dressed in suitably sombre grey and went to find him. 

Avon had his left hand wrapped around a mug of something whitish and an emptied plate sat in front of him. He was tapping on a hand console with his free hand and didn't look up as Tarrant came in.

"What news?" Tarrant asked. 

"The Feds have put out a statement saying that they were invited in by the people of Ortan to restore order following the overthrow of the corrupt regime. No mention of us at all."

"I guess they'd struggle to fit us into their narrative. I'm not sure that even I know what we ended up doing there."

"Making a mistake." Avon still didn't look up at him. "Possibly several mistakes. There was no mention of Nerus either."

"What did you see when you went down there?"

“The fighting had already moved into the corridors. I saw no-one except Cally and Dayna, and they were unconscious. No sign of the bracelets or their guns; Nerus must have taken them.” 

"There was actual fighting, though?”

"Oh, it was a genuine revolt," Avon said. "And I expect that Trepp is genuinely dead. Whether Nerus's fellow playthings knew they were paving the way for the Federation to take the system over, I don't know. Possibly they wouldn't particularly have cared; they did have other motives. But Nerus knew and he took out our people first chance he got."

"Playthings," Tarrant repeated. "I suppose that being what you are, you would see then that way."

Avon finally looked up at him. "You're particularly sensitive today. If you're hunting for someone you can blame for this mess you're looking in entirely the wrong direction. You might be better off trying a mirror."

He knew that none of this was Avon's fault. He also knew that he couldn't keep on blaming the man for something that hadn't even happened when they now had to deal with the consequences of what had. Still, the ease with which Avon seemed to align himself with the bad guys made him deeply uncomfortable. Even if Nerus had planned this with the Federation, Tarrant thought it likely that the other men had risked their lives to escape from being brutalised for someone else's entertainment. They were not anyone's playthings. 

He looked back at Avon's unexpressive eyes. Maybe he'd just had enough of sadists.

He didn't blame Avon for most of his choices, not really. It was the best option they had at the time and to get Nerus out he had been prepared to go through unpleasantness far worse. Avon's play-acted assault had in many ways come as a definite relief. He honestly wasn't that angry about the decisions, not even the risks he'd taken.

He wasn’t sure what he was angry about, but there was definitely something. When he figured it out he’d have to confront the man and it wouldn’t be easy. It never was.

"Whatever it is that you're sulking about this time will have to wait." Avon drained the mug in front of him and stood up. "I need to review the repairs and Cally should be out of the med unit shortly. I suppose that everyone will then want to discuss our options, though in my opinion the best thing we can do will be to just put this whole debacle behind us."

"The Federation used us to take over Ortan! And Nerus tried to kill us, after everything we went through for him!"

Tarrant had seldom seen Cally more angry.

"I think we have to assume he was a Fed plant all along." Tarrant had been thinking about this. There was no way that Nerus could have contacted the Federation, offered his services and set this up with them in the three days after they’d snatched him from Ortan, and no motive for it either. It made much more sense if he'd been sent in there beforehand to spy and destabilise the system for them.

So Nerus hadn't needed rescuing and had no reason to be grateful. That make Tarrant feel a little better about the perfidy of human nature but not much.

"They couldn't have known that we'd come to rescue him," Dayna said.

"It wouldn't have to be us," Tarrant said. "It could be any way to get guns and the idea of breaking out to those men. And what about his mother?"

Avon shrugged. "Dupe or co-conspirator. Does it matter?"

"Ortan will be crawling with ship and troops as they consolidate their control. Ricon 2 might be vulnerable."

"You don’t think that's a bit- oh, I don't know - vindictive, Tarrant?" Villa asked.

"If our aim is to show people that they can't do this to us with impunity, vindictive sounds about right."

"Tarrant's in the mood to blame everyone except himself," Avon commented.

"Oh, I blame myself," Tarrant snapped back at him. "I trusted the wrong people."

"You usually do," Avon said. "They'll be waiting for us in both systems and I've had enough of walking into traps for a while."

They argued back and forward for a while, but Avon was right. They wouldn’t have the advantage of surprise and Liberator couldn’t take on the small fleet of Federation ships that were likely to be waiting for them. Later, they finally agreed. Later, they’d hunt down Nerus, if they could.

  
"Why the knife?" 

Tarrant had honestly tried to put the whole thing behind him. Nerus's treachery wasn't Avon's fault. But while he’d been failing to sleep the exact thing he’d been so angry about had finally dawned on him. He had to know. 

"Interrogations again?" Avon covered his mouth in a yawn, apparently genuine. Wrapped in his familiar black silk gown, he opened the door to let Tarrant into his room with no obvious enthusiasm. 

Tarrant ignored the seat that Avon had gestured towards and instead rested his clenched fists on the table as he glared across it at Avon.

"You know damn well that I wouldn't have let you do that here. You know exactly where my boundaries are, and things with sharp edges have always been on the wrong side. So why the knife, Avon? Why didn't you just string me up using your electromagnetic toy, hit me a few times for show, fuck me and have done with it?"

Avon sighed. “It I tell you, will you go away and let me sleep?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. Take that off.”

His own dressing gown? “I’m not here for that.”

“I’m not propositioning you. I’m answering your question. If you want your answer, just do it.”

He reluctantly slid out of the crimson gown. “And?”

Avon came round to see him fully. “Turn round, slowly."

He complied. “This had better be good.”

“That will do.” Avon picked up the gown and tossed it into his arms. “Now look.” He unwrapped his own black silk and stood naked in front of Tarrant.

“What am I meant to be looking for? You look pretty much the same as usual to me." Annoyingly desirable. Tarrant ignored his own instant arousal. It really wasn’t what he was here for.

Avon reached down to brush a hand over his own limp cock. “This. My orientation is primarily sadist, not gay. You should know by now that it takes more than your naked body to trigger the relevant physiological response. Have you any idea how much trouble you would have been in if I’d remained like this and had to relinquish you to the bona fide rapist with the knife?”

“You could just have triggered the teleport.”

“Hindsight is a marvellous thing. If I’d teleported us out you’d never have known that Nerus was a spy and I can guarantee you’d have been in here screaming about how my unnecessary squeamishness had wrecked your mission and condemned a poor innocent boy to a life of sex slavery.”

Avon wrapped himself up again. "Nothing short of mortal danger would have got you out of there voluntarily and you had clearly completely failed to realise that was what Trepp represented. I quite possibly saved your life. I certainly saved you an experience that would have much more traumatic than you’d anticipated.”

“I could have handled Trepp,” Tarrant snarled. “I knew he meant me harm. I foolishly assumed you didn’t. That was my mistake.”

“He was a man who brought a knife to his bedroom, with no-one to hold him responsible for the consequences,” Avon’s voice was colder now. “I found an excuse to take it away from him. There are your explanations, spelled out for you because you appear to be unable to reason at the moment. Go away and think about them on your own. I’m tired.”

He walked over to the door and opened it.

Tarrant stopped in the doorway, toe to bare toe with the man he sometimes thought of as his lover.

“You know damn well that given a choice I would never have allowed you near me with a knife just to get yourself aroused,” he said to Avon. “Doesn’t the fact that you did it for your entertainment without any regard for how I felt bother you at all?” 

“It's been seven days." Avon said. "That's how long it took you to decide what particular part of these events you were going to be indignant about."

His lips twitched. "Yes, I took advantage of the fact that you weren't going to say no. But I also took account of the fact that you were sufficiently distracted to be barely reacting to the blade at all. That much professed knife phobia of yours vanishes when you're not thinking about it. You might want to consider whether it's more than a figment of your imagination."

He nudged Tarrant over the doorstep and pressed the button to close it. "Goodnight."


	5. Chapter 5

"Paro 3?" Tarrant was frowning, but that was nothing new. "Data says it's a small world, mainly agricultural. Why should we go there?"

That bitter tone was still there. Nothing to do about it now, Avon thought. The man would get over this latest resentment in time, or perhaps he wouldn’t.

He kept his voice level. "Because I got Orac to run a simulation of likely short term Federation targets for system takeover. If we'd thought to do that before we would have known that Ortan was dangerous. Paro 3 is high on the list.”

He paused, wondering how proactive he should be. He didn’t want to appear out of character. Fortunately, Cally was taking up the baton. 

“We should take a look at the place now, while the Feds are still digesting Ortan and unlikely to make a move straight away." 

"We could set a trap for them there," Dayna said.

"That sounds over-ambitious," Avon said in a discouraging tone that he knew perfectly well would have no effect whatsoever. Sure enough they were soon enthusiastically discussing what they might achieve on Paro 3 and the question of going there was clearly settled

"Where is Orac?" Tarrant had come over to where he had stepped back from the discussion.

"In my rooms."

"How convenient. Did you actually run this simulation of yours?"

"Do you think I'm lying to you?"

"I think you would lie to me any time that it suited you."

"And why would it suit me to go to Paro 3?"

"I don't know," Tarrant said. "I'd ask Orac but it isn't here, is it?"

"I'm not lugging it round the ship just to satisfy your paranoia. If you wish to come and interrogate it in my quarters, feel free." 

"I don't want to do anything in your quarters," Tarrant said flatly. "When you're finished with whatever it is doing, bring it back. I won't fly into this hornets' nest of yours without it on the flight deck."

The more irritated Del Tarrant was, the more predictable his responses. It was one of the few consolations about the situation for Avon. "It will be there."

"Set me down at these co-ordinates."

Vila looked startled. "You're meant to be staying up here."

"I'll be half an hour. Any longer than that and you can tell the others where I've gone."

"I don't want to be left on my own!"

“Thirty minutes. Don't be completely spineless, Vila. There's nothing out there to trouble the ship."

This time they had done a full survey of the entire system. Paro's only fleet consisted of two elderly freighters, both currently on course to the next system with trading goods. Nothing else was within half a day's journey at full speed. The only possible danger might be on the planet itself, where the other three had taken yet another stolen ship down to the main settlement, claiming engine problems and the need for urgent repairs.

A combination of reason and mild intimidation of Vila finally did the trick, and Avon found himself in the edge of cultivated woodland in the gathering darkness.

Before him was the town, a few lights shining. Over the low roofs he could just about make out the silhouette of the stone tower of the Council building, where the other three had been planning to go. Much closer to him there was a large wooden barn-like structure with its doors open and a little light spilling out. He watched for a few minutes, but no one went in or out. Touching the gun at his hip, he was about to step forward when a noise came from behind him.

"You can lower that," Tarrant said of the gun. "What are we doing out here?"

Avon sighed and holstered the gun. "Vila panicked, I suppose."

"Vila called us as arranged as soon as you made your move. It was clear enough that you were up to something. We just had to let you think you were sneaking away unobserved. Now you have the pleasure of my company."

It was the first time he'd seen Tarrant smile for weeks, Avon thought, inconsequentially. 

“You didn’t disappear in front of the natives?” he said.

“Give me some credit. I stayed in the transport. They had no idea that I was there in the first place.”

"I don't need you here. I’ve no need for back up."

"If you need that gun, you need back up. I don't intend to let you get killed on this backwater planet doing Hell knows what. What’s in that building?"

“I intend to find out.”

Orac had reported that there wasn't a culture of carrying weapons on Paro 3 but Avon wasn't intending to rely on that. His hand was close to the gun as he strode towards the entrance, aware of Tarrant's firm steps behind him and the surprising lack of complaint. Maybe Tarrant had realised the irrationality of his latest grievance. That would be convenient. 

There was a metal sign over the doorway reading “Union Hall”. One of the two wide doors was open to the high roofed interior. Avon glanced through to see several groups of people gathered around wooden tables. There were drinks in evidence; it looked like regular socialising.

“There ought to be a back door,” he told Tarrant, who nodded. They skirted around the outside of the hall, doing their best not to look conspicuous. Behind the building was a standard door with a lock that Avon had no trouble with, leading into a short hallway with stairs at the end to a second floor.

The ground floor doors were locked and they could hear nothing behind them. Up the stairs were two sets of living quarters; guest rooms, Avon imagined from the lack of personal effects. One seemed to be occupied, though the guest wasn’t currently at home. The other was as bare as a hotel room; just a double bed, chairs, vid screen and an empty wardrobe. 

Tarrant sat down on the bed. “Want to try it out?” he suggested.

“That’s a poor joke.”

“I’m serious. Whoever your quarry is he’s not here yet. We tell Vila we’re waiting, there’s a decent lock on this door. It beats sitting around and arguing.”

Avon glanced around the bare room. “This is hardly my idea of a well equipped venue.”

“I could spice it up a little.” Tarrant bent down to draw a knife that had been concealed in his boot. He flipped it, catching the blade between finger and thumb, and offered it, handle first, to Avon.

“What exactly are you playing at?” Avon resisted the temptation to reach out for the blade.

“I’ve been thinking. You were right about one thing,” Tarrant said. “Your knife wasn’t what bothered me. I find that intriguing.”

“You came down here for this?”

“Oh no, I came down to see what you were up to. This was going to wait until we were back on the ship. But since we’re here now…”

“You’re nervous,” Avon said.” You want to get it over with.”

“If I were I would hardly be likely to admit it to you, would I?”

He spun the knife again, catching it closer to the tip this time. 

“Not here,” Avon said. “I might need that backup.”

He opened his wrist com. “Vila, make a note of this exact position and bring us up. We’ll need to come down again in an hour or so.”

“Trouble?” Vila asked as the ship appeared around them. He was looking at the knife still outstretched in Tarrant’s hand.

Tarrant flipped it round and slid it back into his boot. “Just illustrating a point.”

From Vila’s expression Avon was pretty sure that he knew what sort of point was being illustrated. He often wished that he could do the whole thing more quietly but with Tarrant it seemed impossible. The lack of inhibition was undoubtedly part of the attraction. The lack of discretion, on the other hand, was just a nuisance.

“I’ll stay at the teleport. If the other two have no trouble to report, we’ll go down again in an hour.” And do nothing interesting in the interim. After the mess that they had made of Ortan Avon wanted the person staying in that room badly, even more than he wanted Del Tarrant.

"I'll go up to the flight deck and check the scans." Tarrant came over to fiddle with the console. "Comms will copy through to me there now. That won't put you to the trouble of remembering to keep me informed."

Avon watched the man's rear as he walked out. He shouldn't agree to anything that Tarrant proposed, however tempting. The man instinctively pushed for dominance. It was unwise to let him think Avon would go along with his whims.

He glanced over at Vila, who was watching him. 

"Nothing," Vila said hastily. "I was thinking about nothing at all."

It was clearly a lie, but not one he wanted to challenge. "If you're getting coffee you can bring me one."

"We've been offered dinner and a bed for the night," Cally's voice came through. "We told them that we needed to come back to the ship to get ready."

"Don't go out in public," Avon warned them. "There's a chance you might be recognised."

"Why should we be? We’ve never been here before. They are independent- I don't think they pay much attention to Federation wanted postings."

"Are you going to tell them, or shall I?" Tarrant's voice came from the flight deck,

Avon bit back a sigh, "Nerus is here," he told them. "He's managed to insinuate himself into the workers’ union and he’s stirring up trouble between them and the council. It's a big town - there's no good reason why he should see you, but keep out of sight as much as possible."

"To hell with that!" Dayna's voice was sharp. "Do you know where he is?"

“I’m dealing with it," Avon said.

“We’ll bring him back here.” Tarrant said over the com. “He’s got a lot of questions to answer and I promise you’ll get your chance to ask them.”

That seemed to satisfy Dayna, so Avon let the presumption go.  


He was uncomfortably aware that he was letting rather a lot of things go at the moment. He couldn’t even think of the right words he’d need to put Tarrant in his place, let alone commit himself to saying them. It was beginning to be something of a concern.  


It was probably just because he hadn’t been sleeping well for a while now. When this was done he’d restructure his exercise regimen. 

“Here!” Tarrant dragged Avon by the arm to the side of the door.  


Avon flattened himself against the whitewashed timbers, reaching slowly for his gun as the footsteps came up the wooden staircase.  


“About the strangers.” The voice was loud, male and to Avon’s ear sounded false. “I could be hours, I’m afraid. Don’t wait up for me, darling. Goodnight.”  


“What strangers?” That was undoubtedly Nerus, though he didn’t sound nearly as young and helpless as he had on Liberator.  


“Just a couple of traders with engine trouble. It doesn’t matter. I just needed something to tell the wife. Is it this room?”  


Avon could see the mechanical door handle turn. He brought his gun up to point at the ceiling, waiting.  


“Next door,” Nerus said, and the handle stopped moving. “What are their names?”  


“I don’t know.” The man sounded exasperated. “Just two women. I told you that they didn’t matter…”  


Their voices were cut off as Avon heard a door shut.  


Very quietly, he slid the bolt closed on the guest room and pulled two sets of earphones and a small round metallic device from his pocket. When he slid it onto the adjoining wall it stayed there. He passed a pair of earphones over to his silent companion and put the other pair on.  


The voices were as clear as if he had been in the room.  


“I want images of them and their ship,” Nerus was saying.  


“I can’t get them now!” The man protested. “It’s late and besides I didn’t come here to be ordered around by a bloody kid. I warn you, I don’t take kindly to being messed around. You’re not too old for a hiding, you know.”  


Avon tensed, waiting for the sound of fighting but after a pause Nerus spoke, his voice noticeably younger sounding and placatory. “Sorry. I just worry. I told you the Council were working with the Federation. What if they are Fed spies?”  


“So what if they are? There are only two women and they’ll still be here in the morning.”  


“You’re right of course.” Nerus said meekly. “I’m sorry. Let me help you with that.”  


After another five minutes of ample and easily interpretable noise but no conversation, Tarrant moved very quietly up to Avon and took off his headphones.

“Why are we listening to all this when we could just go in there and take him? From the sound of it he’s not currently in any position to fight back.”

Avon found himself momentarily without a good answer. “Best to wait for them to be fully distracted,” he suggested.

“Well, I’d definitely be distracted by now,” Tarrant said. “If that’s any help.”

It wasn’t. “We’ll take him now. Leave the other guy; he’s obviously not in on any of this.”

“Somehow I doubt that Nerus is doing him for fun,” Tarrant said.

“Then he’s a target.”

“A hapless victim. Poor man.” Tarrant laughed. They could hear the noise the two men were making through the wall now without the need for the equipment. “From the sound of that I think we could miss our window of full distraction opportunity if we wait much longer.”

“Very well. I’ll take Nerus. You keep the other guy from getting in my way.”

“Yes boss.” Tarrant slid the bolt back. “Did you hear them lock the door?”

“No. I don’t think they did it.”

“Me neither. If it doesn’t open, stand back and I’ll shoot the lock.”

Nerus had fast reactions. By the time Avon was through the door his hand had dived under the next pillow. Avon shot it, creating a cloud of feathers and a scream. Tarrant was already by the bed, extracting the gun and sliding a teleport bracelet over the bleeding wrist.

The local man had collapsed, pinning Nerus under his considerable weight. If they teleported they’d take him with them. Avon gestured at Tarrant who hauled the man off and onto the floor. 

“Crawl to the bathroom,” Tarrant told him. “Sit down there, put your hands over your ears and stay there until we tell you to come out.”

The man hastened to obey. Tarrant slammed the bathroom door behind him, pulled a chair over to jam under the handle and nodded at Avon. Nerus was silent, lying naked on the bed and cradling his wrist.

“Three to teleport,” Avon said quietly into the bracelet com.


	6. Chapter 6

From this far out the Paro sun was barely brighter than any other star in the sky. They’d left a satellite in orbit around the planet to keep them appraised of any ship movements, but Tarrant would rather know if the Feds were coming in force a lot earlier than that so Liberator was waiting in what he judged was the most likely direction for any invasion, scans on full. 

He walked around the console to stretch his legs, rather assuming that he would be on the flight deck for the duration, and found himself facing Avon in the doorway. 

“I want you sitting in on the interrogation.” Not so much a request as a demand.  


“You’ve got Dayna,” Tarrant said. “And I’m busy.”  


“Dayna’s there to put the fear of death into the bastard. I need someone with a better nature that he thinks he can appeal to. That’s you.”  


“I’m no better natured than you. I’d happily shoot him myself.”  


“You found him clothes and insisted that he have access to the med unit. That makes you the good guy in his eyes. I can use that.”  


Tarrant shook his head. “If he’s a trained Federation spy my play-acting nice guy won’t fool him.”  


“You won’t have to act. When you see what I do to him I guarantee you won’t be able to help protesting on his behalf.”  


“You’re wrong.” Tarrant swept an irritated hand across his console controls. “I don’t know why you seem to think I’m a soft touch, after everything. He tried to kill Dayna. There’s nothing you could do to him that he doesn’t deserve. You could take him to pieces slowly and I wouldn’t say a word.”  


Avon’s eyes narrowed at him. “Do you want to make a wager about that?”  


“With what?” Tarrant was never averse to gambling but he couldn’t see what the stakes could be.  


“I still have your necklace. Sit silent through the whole interrogation and you can have it back. Otherwise it’s mine again.”  


Tarrant hadn’t been entirely sure that he wanted it back, but he found that the prospect of losing it for good hurt. “What on Earth would you do with it?”  


“None of your business. Yes or no?”  


“Given that it belongs to me already it’s hardly an even deal. What do I win?”  


“What do you want?” Avon asked.  


“From you? I’m not sure there is anything.”  


Avon’s voice lowered. “No? What about the knife?”  


Oh fuck. Tarrant had almost forgotten embarrassing himself in that empty bedroom. He’d though that Avon would find the knife blade irresistible, but the man had turned him down with that teleport back to the ship instead. And Tarrant, as he tended to do, had filed the failure under ‘whoops, unsuccessful’ and put it along with all his other failures firmly out of mind.  


“I thought better of the idea,” he said, not entirely untruthfully.  


“I thought you might.” Avon took one of the seats at the side of the flight deck, indicating, Tarrant thought, that he wasn’t planning to do anything there except harass Tarrant. “Once you’d had the chance to think about it.”  


“I’m not afraid!”  


“Of course you are. The question, as ever, is how afraid you can stand to be. You have boundaries, naturally, and it seems that we’ve found them.”  


“You’re trying to goad me into this.”  


“Hardly. I’m not so keen on having my entertainment cut short by your safeword that I’d push you into something you can’t do.”  


Tarrant shook his head. “Now you’re really goading me. And the annoying thing is that it’s succeeding. But you’ll be disappointed to know that I’m not sufficiently bamboozled by your games to give you exactly what you want as my reward for winning your wager.”  


Avon smiled at that. “So what are you gambling for?”  


That was the point at which he should say that he wasn’t going to the interrogation. Instead he took a breath. “I want to go to bed with you.”  


“With or without the knife?”  


“Without. Also without whips, chains, cuffs or any of the rest of your paraphernalia. Just you, me and a bed.”  


“Sounds dull,” Avon said  


“Only for you. And that’s why it’s my winnings, not yours.”  


“I suppose it doesn’t matter since you’re not going to win. Your terms are agreed.”  


“Without qualification?”  


“Without, as you say, qualification.”  


“Meaning that you’ll be fully co-operative?”  


Avon sighed. “I’ll ensure that you will have nothing to complain about. Will that do?”  


Tarrant thought it over. It was unlikely that Avon was lying; not much was sacrosanct on Liberator but a wager was as close to an unbreakable vow as it got. “And my necklace and bracelets back. Just to be clear.”  


“Of course.”  


“If you want me to protest on Nerus’s behalf, this is an odd way to make it happen. You’ve just ensured that I’ll say nothing.”  


“I want you to be deeply and obviously uncomfortable about the situation,” Avon said. “And eventually I want you to speak out because you can’t keep silent any more, however much you want to. That will do far better for my purposes than an early and half-hearted objection because you feel you ought to uphold the principles of decent behaviour”  


“You really are a piece of work,” Tarrant said. “All right. Let’s get this over with.”

Nerus had been put in one of Liberator’s empty room, one with glowing walls and no objects of any kind. He had cuffs around his wrists and ankles. Tarrant found himself rubbing his own left wrist with his thumb; they were Avon’s property of course and he’d worn them himself several times. It was just like the man to draw no distinction between business and pleasure.  


Their captive was sitting on the floor, back against the far wall and knees pulled nearly up to his chest. He looked up as they came in but said nothing.  


They arranged the chairs they’d brought in with them, facing their prisoner and with their backs to the door. Tarrant stood behind him, resting his hands on the back. Avon had said this would go on for a while and he wasn’t ready to sit down yet.  


“Nerus Ed-Della,” Avon said. “Born and raised on the independent world of Ricon 2. Your father was originally from Earth, and he was arrested when you were eleven Earth years old, accused of working for the Federation. He escaped, taking you with him. Despite the theft of her child, your mother always claimed his innocence.”  


“Ten years later you returned to Ricon 2 alone, claiming your father was dead. You were welcomed back into the family with open arms. A year after that you were kidnapped by pirates, and a few weeks after that Liberator visited the Ricon system and your mother begged us to track down and rescue you. She even lowered your age a little, to make her plea more persuasive. Have I missed out anything important?”  


Nerus said nothing.  


“There’s your training of course as a Federation agent. I think we can presume that was thorough. You were sent back to undermine your home world, but there would have been a few too many people on Ricon 2 keeping a wary eye on you for that to work well. Not everyone was as trusting of you as your doting mother was. So you moved on to Ortan, where your skills could be better utilised. And then, after Ortan fell, to Paro. You weren’t meant to be traced there but we are better at this than any of Servalan’s people. And now we have one of her agents, and we have to decide what use to make of you.”  


"We should just make an example of him,” Dayna said.  


“It’s certainly one option,” Avon agreed.  


With his arms around his knees and his head resting on them, Nerus looked young and vulnerable. He was neither, Tarrant reminded himself. He was twenty two and had delivered an entire planet into Federation hands.  


“Whatever we do, we have a day and a half to do it in before we need to concern ourselves with the rescue party,” Avon said.  


“We don’t have to stay around Paro,” Tarrant pointed out.  


“They won’t be coming to Paro. They’ll be following his tracer.”  


“A tracer? Why didn’t you take it out?” Dayna demanded.  


“Because it’s networked into his brain. After I remove it he’ll be in no state to answer questions. Don’t worry. I’ll rip it out and destroy it before we’re put in any danger.”  


Nerus spoke for the first time. “He knows there’s no tracer. He’s trying to manipulate you.”  


“You’re surprised that I found it, I imagine. That’s why I wanted you in the med unit. This ship’s technology is far beyond Earth’s. It took out that suicide device as well, by the way; apparently it disapproves. No-one’s going to reach you and you can no longer choose to die.”  


Nerus pulled his arms a little closer around his knees. Tarrant though the gesture was unfeigned, but he couldn’t be sure.  


“What do you want to know?”  


“Everything,” Avon said. “Everyone you’ve worked with, every plan you saw or guessed at, every action you’ve taken. Details of your superiors, and theirs, all the way back to Servalan. Names, places, dates. But I’m in no hurry to start asking questions yet. Tarrant!”  


Avon hadn’t turned his head to address him. His eyes stayed on Nerus. “Since you’re still on your feet you can get the coffee.”  


“Right.”  


Vila was in the galley, nursing a glass of something that he didn’t offer to share. “Have they started pulling out his fingernails yet?”  


“I don’t think that will be necessary. Avon’s doing intimidation.”  


Vila shivered. “Almost makes me sorry for the poor sod. Or it would if he hadn’t hit Cally. Still, Avon is pretty scary.”  


He glanced sideways at Tarrant. “I guess you know that.”  


Vila had been unwillingly stuck on the other end of the comm while Avon assaulted him for Trepp’s benefit. There wasn’t much he could claim was private any more, if he ever could.  


“Three coffees,” he said to the synthesiser. “Preferences Dayna, Avon, Tarrant.” And to Vila, “He doesn’t intimidate me. If he did I’d be long gone.”  


“I don’t think so,” Vila said. “I don’t think you run away from things that scare you.”  


Tarrant though about that while the dispenser grumbled. “I think that’s what Avon believes,” he said finally.  


“There you go then,” Vila said. “Avon’s usually right.”  


Tarrant picked up the carrier for the mugs. Without looking at Vila he said, “Do you think I’m a fool?”  


“I think you’ve got something the rest of us don’t have. Not that any of us would want it.”  


“I’m not entirely sure that I want it either. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve decided that I’m done with him.”  


“I tried not being a thief for a while”, Vila said thoughtfully. “I didn’t need the money and I thought life would be so much more comfortable if I wasn’t always looking over my shoulder. But something would always come up and I’d think that I could do that, easy, so I did. It’s hard to give up what you’re good at.”  


Tarrant snorted. “You think I’m good at being a masochist?”  


“I should think so,” Vila said. “You’ve got all the right qualities for it.”  


"And what might they be?”  


“Bravery,” Vila suggested. “Persistence. And lots of really dumb.”  


Tarrant contemplated putting down the tray and punching him, but he could hardly deny that lots of really dumb was what he tended to demonstrate when Avon was around.  


Instead he put a little deliberate lightness in his tone. “Well, this conversation has been extremely edifying. We’re never, ever going to talk about this again.”  


“Fine by me,” Vila said. He stood up, his hands still cupped around the half full glass. “I think I’m going to see Cally on the flight deck. I mixed this really good new drink to show her.”  


"Don’t get drunk,” Tarrant instructed. “We’re expecting half the Federation to turn up soon.”  


“That’s a really good reason to get drunk.” Vila retorted, and wandered out of the door.  


Tarrant looked down at the slowly cooling drinks. Hopefully Avon would have had time to do whatever it was that he wanted to do to Nerus without Tarrant present. He’d better get back and see if he needed to start wiping blood off the walls yet.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is graphic.

Avon had sent Dayna out to delay Tarrant for a while. In an abrupt change to his carefully laid plans, he’d decided that neither of his crewmates ought to see all of this. Let them assume he found it difficult to hurt the man in cold blood, as any reasonable person would. Tarrant might guess the truth, but he was pretty sure that Tarrant wouldn’t want to have his guess confirmed. Tarrant liked to think he and Avon had something special going on. He really wouldn’t want to know that Avon could get the same pleasure from the pain of a helpless prisoner; more, in some ways, without a safeword to risk.

He twisted the left arm, very slowly, and Nerus screamed. Even after the dislocation of the shoulder he kept going, the man chained under him struggling and panting agony. There was no need to stop yet, so he didn’t, keeping the pressure hard against the tortured joint for long minutes until he could finally feel the muscles tear. There was a good chance that the damage was severe enough to be permanent. Nerus was gasping for breath on the floor, the released arm hanging useless. 

“Now,” he said calmly to the man, “I’m going to do the same to the other one.”

“Please!” Nerus sobbed. “I’ll tell you anything!”

“Not yet,” Avon told him. “There will be plenty of time for that later. I’ve got a full day to play with you first and I don’t get an opportunity like this often.”

“I’ll let you do anything you want!”

“That’s a shame. It’s much more entertaining when you try to stop me.”

Nerus was whimpering. “You’re meant to be the nice guys!”

“As we were on Ortan? Rescuing you from the king, helping you get revenge on your captor? Yes, I can see how you might have got that impression.”

He kicked the man hard in the gut, then bent down and grabbed the other arm, holding it just at the angle of truly painful. “Trepp was a pathetically amateur sadist. I’m not.”

The door slid open. Tarrant, with a coffee in each hand, taking in the scene.

“Having fun?” he asked. 

Avon couldn’t see Dayna behind him. “Close that door behind you.”

Tarrant did so, then took a swig of one of the coffees. “Yours is getting cold.”

“Tarrant! Del! Stop him, please,” Nerus begged. “I’ll tell you everything you want.”

“That was quick,” Tarrant said to Avon. “I suppose that comes of being an expert. Are we going to ask him questions now or were you planning to entertain yourself for a bit longer?” His voice was steady.

Avon dropped the arm and came back for his coffee. “There’s no harm in making sure he’s really broken. No harm to us anyway.” 

He pushed the emptied mug back into Tarrant’s hands. “That’s unless you have any objection, of course.”

“I’m sitting silently, remember?” Tarrant said. He moved one of the chairs a little further away from Nerus and sat down on it. “Do carry on.”  
Avon smiled a little at that, and returned to his task.

“Don’t you think that might do?” Tarrant’s voice was not quite his normal tone. 

Avon stood up again, wiping his hands on his trousers. He had almost forgotten his audience. “Are you interceding?”

“No. No, I’m not. I’d just note that normally by this point you’d be fucking someone. If you want some privacy I can always get another coffee.”

There was an edge to his voice that Avon wasn’t sure how to interpret. He found himself uncertain. If he kept going until Tarrant finally stopped him then it might be that even with the med unit Nerus would be in no state to answer questions. And now that Tarrant had brought it to his attention he realised that he quite desperately wanted to screw someone.

Not Nerus. Which was good since he was fairly sure that while his crewmates might tolerate the brutal techniques used on a Fed agent who had tried to kill them all, they were unlikely to let gratuitous rape pass, and it was a line he wasn’t keen on crossing anyway. No, it was Tarrant that he wanted and he wanted to be rough about it, but since it was Tarrant he’d need a consent that he suspected would not be forthcoming. 

And that was the other issue. If he stopped now Tarrant would try to claim his winnings and right now Avon could not tolerate the idea of cuddles and kisses. He kicked the prone Nerus in the leg in some frustration. 

“Get him to the med unit. I’m going to take a break for an hour. After that we’ll take him out again and ask some questions.”

“Can I come in?”

Avon had been about to step into the shower. “Open.” 

Tarrant looked him up and down. “Bloodstains and an erection. It’s been quite the fun morning for you.”

“I was about to get rid of both,” Avon said coldly. “You’re interrupting. What do you want?”

“I thought maybe I could help with the latter.”

“I’m really not in the mood for being friendly,” Avon warned. “You can claim your winnings some other day.”

“I’ll have my necklace now, at least.”

Avon pulled it out of the box and tossed it, rather harder than necessary, at Tarrant, who ducked. 

"I thought you'd be in a better mood than this. Wasn't that cathartic?"

"Don't pretend to understand." Avon told him. "You don't and you never will."

"Really? I don't understand what it's like to get aroused by something that all the normal people around me classify as perverse? What it's like to need to sneak off to my quarters to masturbate just so I can function in a crisis without being obsessed by the idea of rough sex with my crewmate? Fasten this, will you?"

He'd turned his back on Avon and was holding the two ends of the necklace together at the nape of his neck. Avon knew that if he touched the bare skin it would be hard to stop there. "You ought to leave."

"I don't want to."

"Then give me your safe word."

"Ripping a prisoner to shreds wasn't enough for you?"

"Word or out."

"All right. Roj Blake," Tarrant said. "Just remember we're on a schedule here and the med unit's already occupied."

“Get undressed, then.”

Tarrant didn’t move. “You could shower first,” he suggested. “Not that I’m squeamish about blood but I’d rather not have a mouthful of someone else’s. Basic hygiene, for a start.”

“He’s got nothing infectious. He went through the med unit earlier, remember?”

“Still. As a favour to me?”

“I don’t do favours,” Avon said. “Particularly to you. But I will trade.” He pulled a length of snaking silver chain from out of his box. “You undress and secure yourself with this and I’ll have a shower. Leave the necklace on the chair. I’ll get to that later.”

He stood under the hot water, his mind full of little but anticipation. There were things he needed to think about. Nerus, and the Federation, and how relationships on this ship might change as a result of what he’d done. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, think of any of them now.

He’d left the door open; he could see Tarrant, naked and erect, fixing the chain to the headboard. Whatever Avon did it would undoubtedly be quick, but he’d also have to be sure that it left Tarrant essentially unharmed. According to Orac the Federation’s arrival could be a full half day earlier than the day they supposedly had left. That wasn’t long for an interrogation with questions this time, and some rest for their pilot. 

This was an interlude neither of them could really afford but he had to get back on an even keel again fast and that meant dealing with the physical demands that hurting the prisoner had generated. If Tarrant was willing to co-operate, all to the good.

The chain tightened around itself which was why Avon had chosen it. In a couple of minutes Tarrant’s hands were both tangled above his head. Avon turned off the shower and walked, still dripping, over to the bed. Tarrant was lying face up, watching him with a smile. 

He tugged the man over onto his front. He could see Tarrant’s shoulder muscles tighten as he waited. Avon reached down, digging the nails on his left hand that he always kept sharp into Tarrant’s shoulder and dragging them down. 

It took the third long rake to get an audible hiss out of the man. Avon could see the knife strapped into one of Tarrant’s discarded boots. Not now, he told himself. Half an hour max and no injuries.

Instead he turned to pick up the necklace from the chair and find the bracelets that went with it. It was still perfect; he’d set the stones with great care. It would be better perhaps if it had meant nothing to either of them but it was too late for that now.

After he’d slid it under Tarrant’s neck and fastened it with steady fingers the man rolled over to face him. “Thank you. I’ll take the rest of my winnings when you’re not in a mood to kill someone.”

“Not kill. Maim, possibly,” Avon said. He clamped the first of the bracelets around the tied wrists and his nails dug into flesh. Tarrant winced.

“I should have known, shouldn’t I. It’s not as if I’d had enough clues.”

“To my nature?”

“You described yourself to me once as a recreational sadist but that’s not the whole truth, is it?”

“You’d have been better staying away from me until this was done.”

“Oh, I’m not concerned on my behalf. Though it would be useful to be able to sit down in relative comfort at some point in the next few hours. It’s him I was wondering about. Would you have raped him if you’d been alone?”

Avon looked down at his questioner, wondering if he really needed to answer that, and concluded that if the question had been asked he probably did. “No.” 

The silence was Tarrant waiting for him to say more. He filled it by forcing the man’s face back down into the bed and kneeing his thighs apart. Safer for both of them to get this over before the burning arousal keyed to the recent memory of screams and blood led him to do the damage that he shouldn’t.

Tarrant pushed back against him, not just co-operative but eager. That wasn’t what he wanted; he stretched a hand up to wrap his fingers around the necklace and twisted hard. That had the man struggling wildly underneath him, and within a handful of relentless thrusts he was orgasming, a gasp of triumph that Tarrant wouldn’t see on his lips.


	8. Chapter 8

"I've been stupid, haven't I?"  
  
"Inevitably. How in particular this time?"  
  
One of these days Tarrant was going to record Avon's post-coital voice and play it back to him. He was pretty certain that the man had no idea how languid and satisfied he sounded, for a short while at least.  
  
"The necklace." He ran a hand round his bruised and slightly perforated neck. "I assumed the spiky design was aesthetic, and very pretty it is too. But it's just another of your toys, isn't it? You designed it to play with."   
  
"Not just another of them." Avon said. "There’s a small system's worth of gems embedded in it for a start."  
  
"Not just," Tarrant conceded. His other hand moved down to pull at his returning erection. Yes, that was good. His grip tightened and he started to jerk faster. Avon hadn't been rough enough this time to drive away all thoughts of his own pleasure. Late and self -administered as his orgasm might be, it would still be in Avon's bed with the man loose limbed and relaxed beside him. He'd settle for that for now.   
  
It was better still when Avon propped himself up on one elbow and took control with the other hand. He was perfectly civilised about it; the urge to hurt must have dissipated for the moment. Tarrant wondered if it would come back when Avon faced Nerus again, and decided that right now he didn’t care.  
  
“So, are you going to keep it this time?”  
  
He had to draw his attention away from the slow build to work out what Avon was talking about.  
  
“The necklace? Yes, I think so. As long as you don’t do anything too atrocious.”  
  
Avon snorted. “Some people might think I’ve crossed that line already today.”  
  
“That’s between you and whatever passes for your conscience. I’m not going to grant you absolution for it.”  
  
“I don’t need it,” Avon said, and his hand moved faster. “But you do know something that you didn’t before.”  
  
“Can we have this conversation in another five minutes?” Tarrant asked rather plaintively.  


  
“Well?”  
  
“Give me thirty more seconds, for fuck’s sake!” Tarrant protested. He was seriously out of breath and everything that Avon had scratched and bruised earlier had decided to hurt all at once.  
  
Avon waited for what Tarrant suspected was exactly thirty seconds. “Well?”

Tarrant wriggled around to find a more comfortable position, ending up in his stomach wuth his head resting on his folded arms.  
  
“I’ve forgotten the question now. I was rather distracted.”  
  
Avon had rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling. "You have the attention span of a gillybird. You witnessed, if you haven't forgotten already, what I did to Nerus. You couldn't possibly have missed noticing that I enjoyed it."

"Oh, that," Tarrant said. "Not news. You'd already made your preferences for playing outside the rules blatantly obvious on Ortan. Why do you think I was so angry with you?"

"So what's changed since?"

It was unique in Tarrant's experience for Avon to be the one who wanted to talk about something personal. 

"I thought about it. And then I thought about your 100 per cent record of stopping when safe worded, even when I could see it was killing you. Whatever appalling brutality might turn you on you're always in control of your actions. Even with Nerus."

He sighed. "And this is the point at which you always tell me that my complacency will get me into serious trouble. But I don't think I believe that any more," 

There was a long silence, during which a smudge on the ceiling tiles seemed to have Avon's full attention. 

Eventually he rolled off the bed and onto his feet. "My break is over. Pull him out of the med unit and make sure he's secured. Get Dayna there. I'll be along when I've spoken to Orac." He was dressing as he talked. 

Tarrant watched him pull his shirt on and resisted the temptation to ask if they were good now. Either they were or they weren't. He'd find out in due course.Trying to push Avon into a declaration wouldn't help. 

Getting Nerus from the med room to the room Avon had designated for the interrogation wouldn't be easy. An hour in the unit had healed all the superficial injuries but his arm still hung limp, the shoulder twisted out of shape. Tarrant's original plan of simply pointing a gun at him and telling him to walk achieved nothing; Nerus was far more frightened of what might be waiting for him than he was about being shot and he simply collapsed on the med room floor and tearfully refused to move.

Tarrant looked down at him with distaste, reluctant to touch him at all, let alone manhandle him through the corridors. Nerus was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a Fed agent, betrayer of his own people and attempted murderer. The information in his head could save the lives of many people a great deal more worth saving than him. He was also hurt and terrified and with reason. 

"Out of my way." Dayna came past him with one of Liberstor's small bots in tow. She bent down to seize Nerus's less damaged arm and clip one cuff over his wrist from the pair sitting next to the med unit. The other was pulled over to clip on the bot.

"Walk or be dragged," she told Nerus. When he didn't reply she shrugged and led the bot out again. Nerus was pulled along the floor for several feet before managing to struggle to his feet and follow. Tarrant came a few paces at the rear, gun still trained on the captive.  


"I didn't want to. They made me do it!"

Tarrant sighed. Nerus really ought to drop the lost little boy act. It might have worked the first time on Liberator's people but he had stabbed Dayna in the back and battered Cally into unconsciousness since then. He'd be better admitting that he was a Fed agent and trading his knowledge for a chance at his life. He had a moderate chance at not being executed if he co-operated; however angry they all were, Tarrant guessed that none of them, even Avon, would want to kill a captive in cold blood. 

Instead he was pleading innocence and ignorance and annoying all of them. Tarrant caught Avon's eye and jerked his head towards the door. "A word."

Avon joined him in the corridor. "Well?"

"I presume you can make him talk." 

"With no difficulty. But I'll need to be rather more hands on than this."

Tarrant nodded. "Give me a couple of minutes with him first. I want to make a few things clear to him. After that if he still won't behave, he's all yours." 

"Any agent operating outside Fed borders would have been throroughly briefed about Liberator's current crew." Tarrant told the young man sitting on the floor. "I'm tempted to ask what they say about me, but I doubt that its as flattering as I deserve. Servalan never really seems to fully appreciate my many excellent qualities. But never mind me. What did they tell you about Kerr Avon?"

"I don't remember," Nerus whispered.

"I suppose that's understandable. You are having a bad day. Let me jog your memory. Did they say he was kind? Yes or no will do,"

A shake of the head.

"Principled? No? Easily distracted? How about stupid, then?"

He kept his voice cheerful. "What Federation intelligence knows, even if they missed it off the briefing, is that Avon is a sadist, and not of the 'silk ropes and is everyone having a good time' variety. And he really doesn't care if this innocent act of yours is fake or not. He's waiting rather impatiently for us to give up asking you questions that you refuse to answer, so that he gets his turn again because you're the most fun he's had in months."

"You wouldn't let him," Nerus said desperately.

"Oh dear. Their briefing about me really was far off the mark. It's the whole boyish charm, I suppose. Do you like my necklace?"

Nerus looked startled. "Er. Yes. It's very impressive."

Tarrant lifted it up from his neck with both hands. He hadn't had time to clean up the bloodstains and he knew that the bruising would be starting to show red and purple. "It was a present from my lover. We have a rather unconventional relationship. Did they tell you that?"

Nerus shook his head again.

"They are getting sloppy. Servalan ought to know; I told her myself, though she might have assumed I was lying. Anyway, you know now."

He settled the heavy weight back around his neck with a slight wince. Nerus couldn't stop staring at it.

"It's something you might want to take into account when gambling that I'm the kind of man who will stand between him and you."

He saw the instant that Nerus gave up. The man crumpled even further down onto the floor. 

"I'll tell you what you want if you promise to let me go."

"You'll tell us what we want and Avon will have no excuse to hurt you. What happens to you afterwards we'll decide once we're done with the questions."

A tiny defeated nod. 

"Zen, tell Avon and Dayna that our visitor has decided to talk to us after all."


	9. Chapter 9

"Avon!"

He looked up from the console that was still showing nothing on scan. "Yes?"

"Do you want to favour us with your opinions on the matter in hand?" Tarrant asked. 

"The neural net tracer needs to be either destroyed or removed from the ship before the Feds catch up with us, but whether it's still in a living brain or not at the time doesn't concern me."

"Fine." Tarrant turned back to the others. "I really don't see the need for us to execute him. Servalan will probably order that done anyway when she finds out how much he told us. If he's got any sense he'll find some way to turn off that tracer and run before they find him."

Avon lost interest in the conversation. They wouldn't kill Nerus. None of them would admit feeling shame for what they'd let him do but they all felt it, Tarrant the most, since he'd been present and done nothing. He started to check nearby systems for somewhere suitable to dump the man, ideally survivable but not civilised.

"How long until they catch up with him?"

Tarrant was with him in the teleport room waiting for Cally and Dayna to come back up. Nerus had been taken down to the wilderness planet, festooned in some of Vila's knots. According to the thief he'd have no trouble in getting out of them before the wild animals roamed at sunset. 

There was a pause while Avon operated the teleport. When the other two were back on the pad he said, "Maybe never."

"What about the tracker?"

"I disconnected it when he came on board." 

Tarrant glared at him. "So no one's been chasing us all this time?"

"I imagine not." 

"Any particular reason for lying to us?"

"I'm one of the only two good liars on the ship," Avon said. "If you believed that the tracer was working, so would he. I thought he deserved to live in fear."

Dayna had a hand on her hip. "Don't lie to us again."

"Of course not." Avon gave her his warmest smile. 

For once they were ahead of the Federation. Avon spent the next few days preparing reports for the systems where they now knew Fed Security were operating. Not only should it frustrate Servalan, but it should give the Liberator, and himself, some friendly ports of call in future.

Tarrant was cheerfully civil to him in public. There were no private encounters. Avon wasn’t at all surprised at the change of heart. He’d thought their last sexual encounter had been born more out of bravado than reason. 

He was therefore rather surprised to be woken by a knock halfway through his sleep cycle. It would be Tarrant. Anyone else would have announced themselves via Zen. He stood up, wrapped a dressing gown around himself and moved to a chair.

“Can I talk to you?”

"I'd prefer it if you waited till morning."

Tarrant looked slightly disconcerted. “I thought you might be pleased to see me.”

“Not particularly,” Avon said. He gestured reluctantly to the other chair.

“This is a bit awkward, then." Tarrant said. “Sod it. Do you want my safe word or not?”

Avon eyed him. “It’s not that simple. What did you say to Nerus to make him fold so comprehensively?”

“Come on Avon, you’re slipping. You could have just replayed the video.”

“I replayed the video.” Avon said. “My question stands."

“You want to know if I meant it? If you'll listened carefully you'd have noted that I didn’t tell him that I wouldn’t stop you. I just told him that he was unwise to rely on it.”

“And would you have done, if your gambit hadn’t succeeded?”

Tarrant grinned. "I’d have let you terrify him. There shouldn’t have been any need for anything more.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

Tarrant shifted in the chair. "Alright then. I suppose I would have stopped you at some point."

“So.” Avon said.

“So what? So I can only sleep with you if I let you torture people?”

“So you’re going to take the moral high ground with me.”

“I’ll take the moral high ground with anyone that I have to. You’re not special.” 

He raised an eyebrow at Avon. “You do what everyone else does; you balance what you want to do with what you can justify. We all do that. You should see the fun I have flying with the ship on the rare occasions that there’s no-one else aboard to risk killing.”

He paused. “Actually, you probably shouldn’t. Forget I said that. Try this instead. I’d be bored as hell if Liberator never needed to fight or run. You know I would. That doesn’t mean that I push her to the limits without a good reason. You’re no different. Someone had to get info out of Nerus. It might as well be someone who’d enjoy it. And yes, I’d stop you if you hurt him for no reason but your own pleasure, just as you’d stop me pretty damn quickly if I started risking the ship because it was fun. But I don’t think either of us would put the other in that position so what does it matter?”

He looked confident again. More than confident. Smug. Avon was uncertain whether he wanted to do something about that. He wondered if Tarrant would consider it justified. An unnecessary question. Del Tarrant would consider anything justified that Del Tarrant wanted enough, despite his fine words. The man was right on one thing. They weren't that different. 

Tarrant had risen from his chair and was pacing. "I have to admit that I don't understand your problem. I can't even figure out if you want me to be more upset about what you did or less." 

Neither, he thought, or both. And aloud, “What good are you to me if you have no conscience?”

“I hadn't realised that was supposed to be my role,” Tarrant said. "You want me to be shocked by you? I was once, but that was a very long time ago. After everything we've done you could hardly expect me to stay the blushing innocent for you.”

His eyes widened. “Is this what happens to your partners in the end? You become jaded when we're no longer appalled?”

Avon remembered the interrogation room and Tarrant staying silent for the sake of a pretty bauble and a night of pleasure. He had changed. Avon had changed him, and not for the better. And now perhaps he didn’t want what Tarrant had become. 

The revelation was raw and unwelcome, and something of it must have shown on his face because Tarrant turned and walked out.

The second thing that woke him was his bed vibrating. He rolled off it and felt the same sensation under his feet.

“Zen, are we under attack?”

“Negative.”

“So why is the ship vibrating?”

“The ship’s internal movement is caused by its current velocity.”

“Which is?”

“Current velocity is standard by fourteen.”

“What? What course?”

“Directly away from the galactic core.”

“Who’s on the flight deck?” Though he knew already.

“Del Tarrant is alone on the flight deck.”

“Open a channel.” He was pulling on clothes as he spoke. “Tarrant. What is going on?”

Silence. “Tarrant! Respond!”

More silence. He ran, barefooted and bare chested, sending messages to the others as he went. The doors to the flight deck were closed and Zen claimed it was unable to open them. All flight controls were operating only from inside. 

The ship was still vibrating. He didn’t think the shake was strong enough to do much damage, but it shouldn’t be happening at all. He hadn't even been aware that the ship could do this speed.

Cally was the first to join him. “What’s going on in there?” 

He shrugged.

“Is he ill? Possessed? Are we running from danger?”

“How should I know?” he said. “Get the door open, Vila!” 

“Get the door open Vila please?” Vila suggested

He modified his request. “Get the door open before the ship hits something and we’re all dead.”

“That will do.” Vila fiddled with the doorpad for a few seconds then stepped away. “The internal mechanism’s been destroyed from inside. This could take a little longer than usual.”

Cally was trying the intercom and getting no more response from Tarrant than he had. Vila started back to his room for necessary tools. Dayna was apparently still asleep. He left her; there was nothing she or any of them except Vila could do for now.

Avon stood empty handed by the door and wondered if Tarrant was a good enough pilot to do this. Away from the galactic core meant into the edges where stars were more sparse but at this speed the shields might not hold out against even a small rock. He’d had bad breakups before but none of them had risked getting him killed.

Cally had given up on the intercom and was talking to him. "Come on, Avon, you must have some idea of what’s going on?”

“Must I? I’m not his keeper.”

“Something’s happened and you know what it is,” she insisted. “When you shut yourself in your room when the Adrumb attacked us, he knew how to get you out. Can’t you do the same for him?”

Could I, he wondered. Do I want to? Wouldn’t it be better to wait for Vila to open the door?

The thief was back now, intent on the internals of the door pad. 

Tarrant lured me out with a promise of the chance to indulge myself. What could I offer him? He’s already indulging.

The ship jerked hard enough to throw them all against the walls. "Shields at 87 percent,” Zen announced. 

“Zen. Estimate time to shield failure.”

“Not enough data.”

“Keep working,” he said to Vila, and to Cally, “With me.Teleport room.”

She ran rather faster than he did, turning as he pelted through the door. “Planning to jump ship?”

“At this speed we couldn’t lock onto anything going slower than we are.” He was at the console, making adjustments.

“Nothing’s going at our speed,” Cally pointed out.

“We are.” He walked over to stand on the pad. “Operate now”

For a moment he thought he’d teleported into a conversation but it was just Tarrant intent on his screen, muttering a stream of numbers. He didn’t look up as Avon materialised.

“Slow her down,” Avon walked up to face him across his console. No response.

“Slow her down or I’ll do it.”

“You can’t do it safely,” Tarrant said without looking up.

“You’re not the only one who can play at hazard. Slow her down or I’ll do it and take my chances.”

Tarrant’s eyes flickered up at him once than back to the screen. “Zen. Reduce velocity by point zero eight percent per second until further notice. Now fuck off, Avon. I need to concentrate.”

Avon could see that. He pulled up shield and internal damage information from his own console. The screen in front of him exploded in data as the ship shook again, and after that he didn’t have the time to speak to Tarrant.

At the top of his screen he could see a figure for the ship’s speed, dropping very slowly. He had no idea how fast the ship could decelerate from this speed.

Finally the screen flashed standard by 12. That would be safe, if their shields weren’t mostly gone. “Can we slow down any faster now?”

“Zen, increase reduction in velocity by 20%,” Tarrant said.

A bang was the door opening. Avon looked up. “Cover shields and internals,” he told the three of them entering. There was damage to a critical area near one set of engines that Zen wasn’t reporting properly on. He set off at a run to look for himself.

By the time he got back, having satisfied himself that the automatic repairs were operating even if some of the sensors were out, the ship had slowed down to a stately standard by six and everyone was shouting at Tarrant.

Avon pushed through them to face the man. “Is this bit of space safe?”

“Safe enough.” Tarrant was flushed and his eyes were bright.

“Zen, local complete stop. You lot, monitor everything, particularly long range scans. You and I,” he said to Tarrant, “are going to have a conversation.”


	10. Chapter 10

  
  
They walked in silence as far as the galley, where Avon dialled up two coffees.   
  
“Well?”  
  
Tarrant settled down on the sofa. His legs felt oddly wobbly and everything seemed unreal. He distantly recognised the feeling as post- adrenalin rush.  
  
Avon was waiting for a reply. He wasn’t sure that he knew the right reply to “well?”  
  
The silence lengthened. “The ship’s fine,” he said eventually. “It will be repaired in a few days.”  
  
“One more collision and we wouldn’t be here to discuss it,” Avon said. “Did you plan to keep flying at that speed until the ship broke up?”

“I was just about done when you arrived. Did you see the figures?  
  
Avon didn’t look as if he cared about the figures. Tarrant told him anyway. “I did the double mil. A million spacials in a million milliseconds. No-one thought it would ever be possible. No other pilot will ever take Liberator there. You need more than the ship. You need the talent.”  
  
Avon’s gaze flickered and for a moment Tarrant could almost read the emotion there. Then it was gone.  
  
“You’re leaving,” the man said.  
  
“I had to do fourteen before I went,” Tarrant said. “I’ll probably never have another opportunity.”  
  
“Where will you go?"  
  
“I’ll find somewhere,” Tarrant said. “I usually land on my feet.”  
  
“You’re not going anywhere until the ship is repaired,” Avon said. He put down his half finished mug and walked out of the room.  
  
They did a lot of walking out on each other, Tarrant thought. He’d chase Avon down and insist on a proper conversation, but he honestly didn’t have anything else to say.  
  
He reached into his pocket and curled his hand around the data crystal that contained all the data necessary to get his record officially verified. It was his ticket to any of the top piloting jobs outside the Federation. He would have to keep moving, he knew. Servalan wouldn’t accept his retirement from the Revolution.  
  
He’d miss them all, but not for long. He’d moved on before. It was easier than you would imagine. Tarrant finished his drink and walked briskly back to the flight deck to tell the others what he was going to do.  
  
  
  
“Shields at zero percent. Damage to engines critical. Time to ship destruction 4, 3, 2…”  
  
Dayna stepped back. “I’m never going to get this.”  
  
Tarrant thought that maybe he should have tried her on an easier simulation. He’d picked the flight from Ortan because there was a lot of things it could teach her about handling the ship, but though she’d got excellent reflexes and was willing to learn he couldn’t turn her into a pilot in just a few days.  
  
“You nearly had it that time. Want to try again?”  
  
“I need a break first.” She threw herself down onto the flight deck seating. His console was showing real data again. Empty space and ongoing repairs.  
  
“If you and Avon aren’t an item any more, why are you still wearing that necklace?”  
  
“Because it’s mine,” he said. Was he supposed to return everything that Avon had give him? One necklace, two bracelets, scores of welts, cuts, and bruises and too much self knowledge. He didn’t think Avon would want any of those back.  
  
“I don’t see why you have to go. It’s not as if any of us get on with Avon well.”  
  
“I don’t have to go. I want to.”  
  
“We won’t last a month without you.”  
  
He laughed. “Which of them told you to say that?”  
  
“It’s true,” she protested. “You’re always getting us out of trouble.”  
  
“You’ll just have to get yourselves into less trouble. Until you find a pilot anyway.”  
  
“And who’s going to sign up to become number one on the Fed wanted list?”  
  
“Someone who wants to fly Liberator,” Tarrant said. “There will be good people out there who know that she’s worth the risk.”  
  
“So can’t you at least find one of them before you go? It won’t hold up your departure long and it might just keep us alive. You know I can’t learn to do this in days.”  
  
She was right, she couldn’t do it. They were going to be stuck with Zen’s automatics until they found a replacement for him. Fine for taking them from A to D, not so great if B and C contained a bunch of pursuit ships.  
  
He didn’t want to live with the destruction of Liberator or the deaths of his friends. “I’ll find you a pilot,” he said. “But just that. No wandering around doing other stuff. I find someone, I leave.”  
  
“I’m sure everyone will agree to that,” Dayna said.  
  
He wondered if Avon would think he was chickening out, taking an excuse to linger over the parting. It didn’t matter what Avon thought. He wasn’t. He wanted out.  
  
  
  
Seeing no-one at any console he thought the flight deck was empty but as he came in he saw Avon standing in front of Zen’s flashing lights.  
  
“I need Orac,” Tarrant said abruptly.  
  
“You can use it here,” Avon said. “Unless your query is confidential, of course.”  
  
“I’m trying to find you a pilot,” Tarrant said. He thought about walking out with Orac but he had nowhere in particular to take it. Instead he sat down next to the perspex box. “Key?”  
  
Avon tossed it to him. “Where are you planning to look?”  
  
“There are a couple of people I came across when I was a mercenary,” Tarrant said. “I thought I’d see if Orac could trace them.”  
  
“You were never a mercenary.”  
  
“Close enough. I ran blockades, people paid me. That’s where you’ll find the ones who are both good and fearless. You don’t last long blockade running unless you’re both.”  
  
“And greedy,” Avon said. “How much is your paragon going to want paying?”  
  
“It’s hardly going to be an issue. It’s not as if we… as if you are short a credit or two.”  
  
“And what if they decide that the ship is worth a great deal more than anything we are offering? How are we to stop them depressurising our quarters and selling the ship to Servalan?”  
  
“I could have done that when I came aboard,” Tarrant pointed out. “So could Dayna. At some point you just have to decide who to trust.”  
  
“Trust.” Avon sounded as if the word was an obscenity. “I’ll need Orac soon. You’d better get on with it.”  
  
He hadn’t intended to do this with Avon listening but it really wasn’t particularly private. He gave Orac the two women’s names and details of where he had lost touch with them. “I want to know what they are up to now, who’s employing them and what they’ve been doing in the last few years. And give it top priority.”  
  
“A conventional search could obtain such data,” Orac grumbled. “I was not designed to operate as a mere search engine.”  
  
“If Liberator doesn’t have a pilot then there’s a good chance that it will get blown to smithereens and you with it,” Tarrant told it. “I would say that it’s in your best interests to help me out here.”  
  
“Your departure is entirely unnecessary and puts the ship at risk,” it snapped.  
  
“For once I agree with it,” Avon said from the other side of the room. “You’ve picked an inconvenient moment to run away.”  
  
“Just do the search as instructed,” Tarrant told Orac, and pulled the key out so that it couldn’t argue any longer. No key for Avon, unfortunately. “I won’t be provoked into changing my mind. I’ve made my decision and I’m glad of it.”  
  
“Are you waiting for me to apologise?” Avon asked. Tarrant couldn’t work out if he was seriously offering to do so or not.  
  
“Not particularly. I don’t think this is anything that you have to apologise for. It’s just come to an end. Things do. I don’t want to hang around trying to resurrect it. I’d rather go.”  
  
“Not even worth a try then.”  
  
He scowled at Avon. “You were the one who walked away when I told you.”  
  
“I was under the impression than you’d made up your mind by then. Besides, it was unexpected. I needed to think.”  
  
“You’d already told me that I was no further use to you.”’  
  
Avon grimaced. “That judgement may have been premature.”  
  
“Seriously? You’re not going to stand there now and tell me that you didn’t really mean it?”  
  
“How was I to know that you’d take a passing comment so much to heart?”  
  
“Passing comment? Are we talking about the same conversation here?”  
  
“It’s possible that I might have been mistaken,” Avon’s voice was lower.  
  
“I don’t think so. I think you meant every word. I think you just expected me to stand there and take it. I know that you consider me unsatisfactory but better than nothing. I don’t know about you but I think I can do better than that. I’m not staying because you snap your fingers and throw out a couple of convenient lies.”  
  
“You’ve threatened to go before.” Avon was trying dismissive.  
  
“And I should have gone through with it. Better late than never.”  
  
"This is completely unnecessary. You have no reason to go. Even if seeing what I did to Nerus put you off sex with me permanently you don't have to leave the ship."  
  
Tarrant stared at him. "That's not even close to what's going on! It's not my problem, it's yours! If it were mine I might have a chance of fixing it, but I can't do anything about the fact that I'm not whatever it is you want. And if you're around I'm never going to stop wanting you, so I have just about enough self respect left not to stay."

He held up a hand to forestall Avon’s response. “Now you’re going to tell me that you don’t have a problem and everything’s fine. I might not be what you want but I’m convenient enough when you want someone to hurt or someone to fuck. I thought for a while that I might be something more than that but it’s not going to happen so I’m done.”  
  
“Is there no end to your arrogance?” Avon demanded. “You can’t even comprehend what’s going on in your own head. You certainly can’t read my mind.”  
  
“I didn’t need to read it. You told me, remember? And now you want to take it back because you hadn’t realised that it would lose you your access to casual sex.”  
  
“That’s enough!” Avon’s voice cut over Tarrant. “I didn’t for one moment think you were stupid enough to believe what I told you! You didn’t seriously expect me to be forthcoming about how I felt?”  
  
Tarrant blinked at him. "I thought you were.”  
  
“Idiot!” Avon snarled. “If you want to leave then go but don’t blame my indifference for it!”  
  
“Why not?” Tarrant snapped back.  
  
“Because I’m not indifferent! That should have been blatantly obvious to you for at least the last six months!”  
  
“You were done with me,” Tarrant insisted. “I could read it in your face.”  
  
“I was having a difficult day,” Avon said dryly. “You were a handy scapegoat. I don’t think any reaction that you could have had about Nerus would have pleased me. And as I recall we didn’t get the opportunity to discuss it further.”  
  
“This is just because you want me to stay,” Tarrant said cautiously. “All lies.”  
  
Avon sighed, walked over and kissed him hard.

Tarrant pulled away, rather later than he should have done and reluctantly. "I always knew you were a very good liar. Why should I start believing you now?"

"What have you got to lose? You can always leave if it doesn't work out."

"I think I've got to that stage already." 

"Give it a few more weeks."

Part of Tarrant really didn't want to do that. Leaving could only get tougher the longer he prevaricated. But knowing that Avon wanted him to stay enough to say these things changed something. 

Not everything - he didn't believe them. But the fact that Avon cared enough about keeping him here to lie about it - that was something, wasn't it?

Her could feel his resolve draining away. He'd missed his chance for a clean break, and all because Avon had snapped his fingers and thown out a couple of convenient lies. He knew it and Avon knew it. Fuck, he hated being so predictable. He could see the smile that Avon was trying to hide. Satisfaction, he thought and wanted to punch him. 

"If I'm going to waste a few more weeks on you, you had better make it worth my while," he said instead.

Avon did smile at that. "I might. Shall we continue this negotiation somewhere more private?"

As its key slid into place, Orac used its fields to scan the flight deck.   
  
“Where is Del Tarrant?” it demanded of the only human present.   
  
“He’s not here.”  
  
“That is highly unsatisfactory. I understood the matter to be urgent. I have completed his searches and analysed the data. One of the candidates is not completely unsuitable as a replacement pilot.”  
  
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Cally said. "I don’t think Tarrant is going anywhere any more.”  
  
“Then my time has been wasted. You may inform Del Tarrant that his erratic behaviour is unacceptable.”  
  
“Not to everyone, apparently,” she said cheerfully. "Apparently he and Avon have locked themselves away in Avon's bedroom and don't want to be disturbed."

Now that Orac had extended its fields further through the ship it could detect Del Tarrant and Kerr Avon in close proximity. It automatically assessed heart rates, sound vibrations and movements. 

"This datum was entirely unnecessary," it told Cally. "Their sexual activity is of no current relevance to my work."

"I'm just glad they're happy."

Orac considered this bizarre statement for a millisecond and decided that any response would only extend the time it was wasting on this conversation., It adopted a tone intended to convey its irritation at the whole affair. "Del Tarrant's continued performance as pilot should be acceptable. I have deleted the search data."

Cally smiled, "Yes, we're pleased that he's staying too." 

Humans. Always unnecessarily emotional. Orac extended its fields out again, the soundwaves being created in the distant bedroom making them vibrate. It mapped all the data against its database of human activity, confirming the persistent divergence from norms. More loud noises could be predicted, and later access to the med unit. Satisfied that the humans were still behaving within their previously observed range it pulled its fields back and waited, not particularly patiently, for the next instructions. 


End file.
